Mentor Close-Up

Linda Hearne, Upwardly Global Mentor

Linda Hearne of High Impact Coaching and Training is an executive and life coach, a trainer and a speaker. She has more than 25 years of experience in high tech, biotech, consulting, manufacturing, training and engineering companies, as well as the public sector. She has held leadership positions in sales, marketing, and operations and currently runs her own business. She has managed training, organizational development and change management projects and programs.

For 18 years of her adult life, she lived and worked in various parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. She continues to travel widely and volunteers as a mentor for Upwardly Global to repay some of the kindnesses shown to her when she was a guest in other cultures and to stay in touch with the international community, which continues to fascinate her.

Linda has an MA from the Johns Hopkins University and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley.

Linda's experience mentoring M*

I've had the pleasure of mentoring M.*, a 26-year-old doctor from Afghanistan, for about three months. After foiling two kidnapping attempts by the Taliban, her father sought asylum in the U.S. for himself and his family. M. and seven members of her immediate family arrived in the U.S. only six days before the terrible attack on the World Trade Center. They are now living in Alameda, CA.

M. grew up in a professional and educated family, where most of us would feel at home in many ways. Yet she had to fight the almost unimaginable constraints placed on women in her country by culture, religion, war, and political and economic upheaval to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. Every time we work together, I am reminded anew of her courage and fierce determination. M. passed the rigorous medical entrance exam at 15 and daily risked her safety to attend Kabul University's School of Medicine. She graduated only weeks before the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 and ended women's access to formal education. M. and her family fled back and forth to Pakistan twice before moving to the U.S.; this is the third time they've had to start their lives anew.

Working as a team, Upwardly Global, another volunteer and I have helped M. put together her American résumé. We signed her up for a phlebotomy class to make it easier for her to find jobs in the health care field to provide for her family while studying to take the rigorous and expensive U.S. medical exams. We've organized informational interviews for her with other foreign-educated doctors studying for the exams to give her a better understanding of the process and the amount of money and effort involved. She recently attended Upwardly Global's training on how to do successful job interviews in the U.S. Since the Islamic way is to be modest about one's experience and education and a well-bred young Islamic woman never looks at men's faces, this training was an eye-opener. We have been helping M. apply for jobs and are starting to network. Americans have been eager to help when I describe M's background and ambitions.

*We use only the initial to protect the privacy of M and her family.