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Our Story

EWA is a non profit foundation which enables high level, successful women leaders to enrich their professional and personal lives with peer to peer confidential, proprietary, life-long mentoring relationships and sisterhood.

Once upon a time, a serial entrepreneur and immigrant to the USA, Larraine Segil decided to take her decades of experience and pay it forward to future generations of women who had some of her same challenges of "being exceptional but different."

​Her goal was to guide and connect them. She endowed the educational institutions that educated her and selected upper career Exceptional Women Who Walked the Road Less Traveled from those places annually. They called themselves the Larraine Segil Scholars (or LSS). These women learned from Larraine how to guide, connect and mentor each other and Larraine realized that there was a need that went beyond the institutions that had educated her. That is why she founded the Non-Profit Public Foundation, Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA).

Founding EWA

​Larraine approached some of the world's leading companies and asked them if they wanted their high potential, high-level women to be enabled to rise even further in their organizations through the EWA Proprietary Metrics Driven Mentoring group by volunteer C-level Executives already in the program, and if so, if they would support this program?

The answer was a resounding 'yes'.

Aspirational Women

KPMG, Adecco, Intel, Cisco, Korn Ferry, Amgen, UBS, ITV Studios America, Frontier Communications, Amgen, GlobalLogic (Hitachi), White & Case Lawyers and many more nominated their women executives, and continue to do so. Some women whose companies would not support them, nominated themselves.

C- Level Women

Over time, it became clear that there is a  segment of women for whom EWA has become a critical community. Most of them nominate themselves. They are women at C level who are either thinking of transitioning into a portfolio career, paying it forward along with Board work, or selling their businesses or the ones they are running, or even moving to another C level position. These women find when they make these transitions, they leave behind their identity, community and often their purpose with the P&L they just left. We fill that gap with a peer group of intellectual stimulation, mutual referrals, support and community. EWA now has multiple cohorts annually which are only C level and Board level women.

Public Sector Women


EWA fundraises to enable a public sector woman to join selected cohorts (CIA, FBI, ATF, Secret Service, US Army and more) at no cost. 

Paying it Forward

The EWA not only benefits in her own career, but she also learns how to mentor other EWAs in the program by being trained and certified by EWA to be a Mentor Liaison.

Our Mission 
Founder
Larraine-Segil-Photo-by-Ken-Jacques-May-
Founder

LARRAINE SEGIL

FOUNDER, CHAIR AND CEO OF THE EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN ALLIANCE FOUNDATION

Larraine Segil is a South African-born entrepreneur, attorney, adviser, lecturer, author, board member, and cheesemaker! She is renowned as the leading Guru in Strategic Alliances having written 5 books on the topic and built (and sold) the leading Consultancy in the area after being CEO of entrepreneurial companies in Health Care and Aerospace Advanced Materials Distribution.

 

She taught Executive Education on Alliances at Caltech for 24 years. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Southwestern Law School on Business Alliances and has been an Adjunct Professor in the Straus Center Masters Program in Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine (#1 in the USA). Her Mentoring Methodology for EWA is proprietary and brings her partnering expertise into a metrics-driven, year-long program that has proven results. Segil was a member of the Board of Frontier Communications ( 2005 -2017) a Fortune 200 company and on the public board of Calprivate Bank as well as on The Graziadio School of Business, Pepperdine, and as Board Emerita at UCLA Anderson School Entrepreneur's Advisory Board, and NACD PSW. Larraine serves on the Fast Company Impact Council and is Vice Chair of a global private company, Alliance Strategies.

What Benefits do the EWA's Receive?

The accepted Candidate is awarded participation in a customized and personalized Peer to Peer Certified Mentoring Program. She will have a dedicated Mentor who also acts as a liaison to the entire sisterhood of female leaders from over 35 industries, using a proprietary metrics-driven in-person and online Mentoring Program. As a graduate, she joins the Alumnae, enabling her to be mentored for life and to be trained and certified by EWA to pay it forward to other peers! 

Her C-level Mentor provides 9 in-person days and twice a month Zoom mentor sessions,  metrics-based, intensive and one-on-one. She interacts with a cohort of high-level women leaders from multiple industries, accessing the growing sisterhood of EWA's including globally recognized women leaders in multiple educational opportunities during her program. When she becomes an alumna, she is mentored for life. Our customized Metrics Driven, Individual Mentoring for our EWA's guides her on how to progress in the corporate, organizational, or portfolio environment as well as gives her advice on balancing career, personal, physical for best outcomes leading to higher productivity for herself, as well as her employer (if relevant) and her community. When C-level women consider moving away from that role and transitioning into another C-level role or a portfolio career  -they lose their community, their identity, and their work friends  - it's a lonely place, not addressed by any other organization. EWA brings those women community, identity and a new group of peers, for the rest of their lives. Download PDF for more information

Mentor Process
exceptional women awardees

MENTOR Process
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M FOR MAPPING

M FOR MAPPING

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E FOR EVALUATION

E FOR EVALUATION

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N FOR NO TO NO

N FOR NO TO NO

01:39
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T FOR TIMING

T FOR TIMING

01:15
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