EIC Women Leadership Programme 9th cohort: Frequently Asked Questions

The 9th cohort of the EIC Women Leadership Programme offers a skills and networking enhancement programme dedicated to women leaders and innovators in the EIC and EIT Communities. The entire programme comprises the four elements listed below:

1. Training Sessions tailored to your needs and covering critical leadership skills relating to team management, talent acquisition, and other growth and scale-up related issues. Examples of training sessions include identifying your leadership style, building inclusive teams, getting buy-in, and effective decision-making. 
2. Networking Events to leverage on the EIC Community and expand your network. Each networking event will have a distinct focus, for example a challenge circle, meeting our alumni or connecting with inspiring role models. 
3. Personal Mentorship Scheme to connect you with one of our suitable mentors. Mentors will support you on challenges related to your leadership and career growth. 
4. Business Coaching Scheme to provide you with the essential tools to address the specific business challenges you are encountering. 

The programme offers a catalogue of profile-based and tailored journeys of training sessions, for example, how to develop your personal leadership and brand, negotiate with partners, pitch in front of investors, and other key topics for innovators to thrive. Based on a needs analysis carried out before the start of the trainings, each session will be tailored to participants’ needs.

The skills will be further developed during the exchanges with personal mentors and business coaches.

Each participant will have the opportunity to work with Mentors – experienced entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, and senior managers who will share their extensive managerial experience and provide access to their diverse professional networks.

Mentors will help participants define their career path, overcome the existing career challenges and set the next steps. You will receive valuable inputs and advice to support you in your career progression by sharing your ambitions and fears with someone that has been in a similar position.

In addition, you will grow your professional network and expand your personal and professional perspectives by connecting with our Mentors. 

Each participant will have the opportunity to work with a Business Coach, who will help participants to discover innovation opportunities and provide insight on their entrepreneurship potential and improve their business plans, implementation strategies and the market entry. Your coaching priorities may vary from go-to-market, or acquiring partnerships, organisational or financial development. The coach will challenge your assumptions and will let you consider new options in a learning-and-solving manner.

Mentors will support you with career related challenges and provide support based on their own experiences. Their advice can include reflections on work-life balance, guidance on interpersonal relations within your teams, and introductions to their networks. Business coaches, on the other hand, will help you with business challenges. For example, they can help you discover innovation opportunities and provide insight on their entrepreneurship potential or help you to improve business plans.

No. No funding of financial support or compensation is associated with the participation in the programme.  Please note that travel and accommodation costs for in-person events are to be borne by the participant.

We will be adding all participants in an exclusive Alumni Group in the EIC Community Platform where you will be able to network, share relevant news, files and learn from your cohort peers, as well as from the female leaders that joined the previous cohorts of the programme.  In addition, we will organize three networking sessions during the programme. These will allow participants to not only connect with their peers, but with the broader EIC Community. 

The 9th cohort of the EIC Women Leadership Programme will take place from September to November 2025. 

After an initial introductory workshop on 12 June, the programme will officially start with a kick-off bootcamp (in-person) on 16 September in Brussels (TBC), followed by weekly online training sessions and networking events from end of September to November.

The Introductory workshop provides a first opportunity for participants to meet their peers. During this meeting, we will present the objectives of the EIC WLP, give a comprehensive overview of the programme, on the Business Coaching and Mentorship Schemes. Moreover, participants have the opportunity to meet and speed date with mentors. 

During the Kick-off bootcamp, we will focus on team building, present the topics of the training sessions and have the first trainings. The bootcamp coincides with EU R&I Days between 16-17 September (TBC), the Commission’s flagship event bringing together policymakers, researchers, business leaders and the wider innovation community to discuss how research and innovation drives Europe’s competitiveness, sustainability and industrial leadership. 

From end of September to November, we will organize one 2-hour training session per week, taking place online (on Zoom). Through these training sessions, participants will develop and acquire essential leadership and business skills. The trainings are led by experts from the industry and are interactive. Participants will familiarize themselves with new skills through discussions, case studies and role-play. 

The programme will enhance the opportunities to network with fellow leaders, EIC Community members, and other relevant stakeholders from the ecosystem through networking events, taking place online and in-person. 

The programme will be concluded with a Closing Ceremony on 19 November, acknowledging all implemented activities and concrete impact on your daily innovator life. 

Participants will also have the opportunity get expert feedback and pitch their business in front of potential investors and network representatives. 

During the Introductory workshop, participants will have a chance to speed-date with mentors from our mentoring pool. After this session, participants will be able to check our full mentor pool and select mentors they would like to work with. The WLP team will support participants in finding a suitable mentor. 

Once participants are matched with mentors, they will schedule bi-weekly meetings with their mentors and meet regularly for a period of 6-months. The WLP team will check-in with participants and mentors to ensure the matching was successful and meetings are taking place regularly. 

From our large pool of EIC Business Coaches, participants will be able to find a coach with ample experience in specific industry and market context. We will assist participants with the pairing process so that the participants will work directly with the EIC Coach of their choice. 

Participants are entitled to benefit of 3 days of business coaching broken down in a number of exchanges suiting your agenda and needs. Meetings can be implemented in the best suitable virtual platform.

By joining the EIC Women Leadership Programme, participants commit to attend and participate in at least 85% of the training sessions (8 sessions in total, 85% attendance rate = attending at least 7 sessions). Moreover, participants are expected to participate in the in-person kick-off bootcamp in Brussels (16 September 2025). Participants who miss two training sessions in a row without adequate justification might be removed from the programme.

The sessions are important steps that will provide participants with valuable knowledge and tools, so you should really strive to be present. If that is not possible, please inform the organisation team as soon as you can. Your attendance will be linked to your conclusion of the programme, with the receipt of our EIC WLP Conclusion Certificate. Only the participants that achieve our attendance regulation will be able to claim their EIC Women Leadership Programme Completion Certificate.

Besides simple personal and career-related questions, you must elaborate on:

• Your future aspirations as regards your professional career.
• Challenges you are currently facing on your professional path.
• Motivation to participate in the Women Leadership Programme.
• Expectations from the Women Leadership Programme.

You will also have to provide us with:

• EIC instrument your company has benefited from/ your company’s PIC number / EIC project ID / acronym / abstract of the EIC project conducted by your organisation / or EIT programme / KIC name / year in which your company has benefited from EIT.
• Your CV in English with a max. of 2 pages in pdf (Applications with CVs not meeting these criteria will not be considered for selection). 

Women (co)founders, CEOs and leaders in other chief positions in EIC & EIT supported SMEs under the following instruments or programmes are eligible to apply:

• SME Phase I and Phase II,
• EIC Transition,
• EIC Pathfinder,
• EIC Accelerator,
• Seal of Excellence under Horizon Europe,
• Women TechEU,
• EIC Scaling Club,
• EIT Programmes (all KICs).

The person who coordinated your organisation´s EIC or EIT project has this information. Please consult with them. Note that non-EIC Awarded EIC Scaling Club companies do not have an EIC project ID. 

No, during the application you must explain your role in the EIC/EIT funded project, which is one of the requirements for your participation in the programme. Please keep in mind that you will need to keep being part of the EIC/EIT supported organisation for the whole duration of the WLP cohort.

The number of women participants associated with the same EIC/EIT project is not limited. However, each applicant will be evaluated on her own merit and not based on the EIC/EIT project she has participated in.

The applicant can work both on an ongoing or a finished EIC/EIT project.

Please use the contact form option on the side of the application tab to indicate potential technical issues with your application.   

The EIC Women Leadership Programme is dedicated to female members of EIC/EIT funded organisations. You cannot apply for the programme if you are no longer employed by an EIC/EIT beneficiary.

Your application will be evaluated based on your motivation, expected impact of participation in the EIC WLP on your future career path and on your profile assessment.

Your application will be assessed by a panel of experts active in the community promoting women engagement in innovation and entrepreneurship. They all have hands-on experiences in leading their own businesses and/or mentoring prospective women entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses.

The results will be communicated on 26 May 2025. All applicants will be contacted by the organising team to be informed of the results. Please add hellowlp [dot] com (hello[at]eicwlp[dot]com) to your list of trusted contacts to ensure the email does not end up in your spam inbox.