Built from Real Experience. Delivered for Real Organisations.
The Growth Mentor™ was created because a problem kept showing up - in boardrooms, in team meetings, in exit interviews that came six months too late.
Talented, experienced women were leaving organisations, or quietly stepping back at exactly the stage in their careers when they had the most to contribute.
Not because they'd lost ambition. Not because the role had stopped suiting them. But because the support structures around them hadn't kept pace with where their lives had gone.
At the same time, their managers were being asked to retain and develop these individuals without the tools or frameworks to do it confidently. So both sides were struggling in silence.
The Growth Mentor™ exists to change that. For the individual, for the manager, and for the organisation that needs both of them at their best.
How we work...
One-to-one mentoring for working mothers;
Structured sessions built around the individual's specific challenges - returning from leave, rebuilding confidence, having difficult conversations with managers, managing competing demands without burning out, and continuing to progress rather than plateau.
This isn't a listening service. Every session produces something actionable. A framework, a decision, a next step. We work in the real world, with real deadlines and real power dynamics, and our mentoring reflects that.
Manager development;
We work directly with the managers of returning employees (individually or in small groups) to build practical capability around having the right conversations, setting the right expectations, and creating the conditions for performance without compromising flexibility.
The result is a manager who feels equipped, not anxious.
Organisational Programs
For organisations looking to go further, we design structured programmes that deliver consistent, scalable support across teams - with clear metrics built in from the start so you can demonstrate ROI upwards.
We work directly alongside HR to do this properly. That means aligning with your existing policies. Maternity and paternity leave frameworks, flexible working agreements, performance review cycles, return-to-work processes and building our mentoring programme around them rather than alongside them in isolation.
Too often, the policy exists but the lived experience doesn't match it. We help bridge that gap. Giving HR the practical delivery layer that turns well-intentioned policy into something people actually feel on the ground.
The result is a programme that's coherent, measurable, and embedded in how your organisation already operates. Not an external initiative that runs parallel to everything else and quietly disappears after six months.
Founder, Hannah Hughes
Hannah works with organisations to close the gap between talent and opportunity - specifically for the experienced working mothers who too often fall through it.
With a background spanning senior corporate roles, Hannah brings something that most consultants in this space don't: first-hand understanding of what it's actually like inside a high-performance organisation as both a leader and a mother.
At Adobe, she founded and led the Parents Network and was instrumental in building the cross-organisational mentoring program - one that went on to involve global companies and mentor hundreds of returning employees. S
he knows how these environments operate, what managers are under pressure to deliver, and where the real friction points are.
She's also a mum of two daughters, which means she knows this from both sides of the table.
That combination of commercial rigour and lived experience is what makes The Growth Mentor™ different.
Our Values
01
Honesty
We create space for the conversations that don't always happen internally.
Straightforward, specific and focused on what needs to change rather than what's comfortable to hear.
Real progress doesn't come from managed conversations. It comes from honest ones.
02
Empathy
We understand the reality of managing a career alongside family life because we've lived it.
This isn't about lowering the bar, it's about recognising the full picture of what's happening for the person in front of us and working with that rather than around it.
03
Alignment
Most of the challenges we work on aren't capability gaps, they're alignment gaps.
Mismatched expectations, unclear ways of working, priorities that have never been properly articulated.
We bring the individual and the manager onto the same page, and keep them there.
04
Clarity
When everything feels urgent, nothing moves forward properly.
We help cut through the noise, simplifying the decisions that feel complex, identifying what actually matters, and creating the focus that allows individuals and managers to move with confidence rather than anxiety.
05
Connection
Strong working relationships don't happen by default. They need space, understanding and the right conversations.
We strengthen the connection between individuals and their managers, creating more trust, cleaner communication, and a more stable, productive environment for everyone in it.
Ready to stop losing your best people?
Whether you're an HR Director, Chief of Staff or working in the L&D Team, building the business case or a manager who needs practical support, or a working mum ready to take back control. The first conversation is always free, always confidential, and always honest.