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Mary Alderete is the Vice President of Global Women's Marketing for the Levi's® brand. This fall, she led the global launch of the new custom fit Levi's® Curve ID jeans line, and the concurrent launch of a new global online community (Shape What's To Come) designed to connect Millennial women with peers and mentors and empower them to make a difference in the world around them. shapewhatstocome.com takes a 'communal mentorship' approach, leveraging key insights from a proprietary, groundbreaking global study Levi's® commissioned to understand what women in their 20s expect and want from life.

Tell me about Shape What’s to Come -- what was the impetus to launch this network?
Levi Strauss & Co. introduced the first-ever jeans for women 75 years ago. With the launch of Levi's® Curve ID, a collection of new custom fits based on a woman’s shape, not size, the Levi's® brand is once again revolutionizing women's fashion. Now we’re taking this commitment one step further by helping young women to shape their futures. As part of our effort to re-engage with women, we conducted a global study to better understand the challenges, expectations, goals and experiences Millennial women face around the world. From this research, we learned that these women in their 20s are experiencing a world unlike women of previous generations. Aside from living in a dynamic, rapidly changing environment, there are many choices and options open to them and technology has dramatically increased their access to these different avenues in their lives. And while they are wildly independent and focused on carving their own path in life, they are also still looking for one thing -- mentorship. Only now they are reinventing it. Rather than a one-to-one, inter-generational passing of advice, they prefer to engage with their peers and other women who have pioneered in their areas of interest.
Shape What’s to Come is our effort to address a need that Millennial women have for this new re-imagined form of mentorship. We created ShapeWhat’sToCome.com as a place where young women around the world can connect and collaborate with peers and mentors alike, to pursue their passions and channel those passions into something big – be it a new experience, career or cause. We truly see ShapeWhat’sToCome.com as a community of women changing the world -- it's a global platform of women coming together to share, inspire, grow and shape their futures.
Can you share some of the findings from your research into millennial women and their expectations? What surprised you the most?
The most significant finding from the research is that Millennial women have a new definition of success given the rapidly changing and dynamic world in which they live. For many young women, the usual straight path toward adulthood -- which in the past meant hitting traditional "milestones" such as workplace success, marriage and children in a particular order -- has been blurred. Instead, they are taking a more non-linear path that involves exploring a web of opportunities which they sample throughout their 20s, taking advantage of possibilities as they are discovered.
We're seeing a definite shift in priorities among these women. Ninety-six percent of women list independence as their most important life goal, and 87 percent define success as being able to shape their future. This is in stark contrast to traditional milestones such as being a mother (68 percent) or getting married (50 percent), which ranked much lower among their goals. What is most surprising is that although most Millennials feel that they are forging their own path, more than half report that they do not have a definite plan in place to achieve their long-term goals. To navigate a changed world, we found that Millennial women are reimagining traditional mentorship and are looking to an expanded peer network to provide perspective rather than relying solely on advice from previous generations.
Millennial women want something different out of a mentor. Ninety-four percent see mentorship as a two-way street -- they see the best mentors are people whom you can both give and receive advice from.
How did you go looking for the initial set of mentors?
Our goal was to find "ambassadors" for the community whose lives and choices would inspire young women daring to shape their own futures. We searched for change makers -- those who are blazing their own trails in life. Our initial mentors come from all walks of life, ranging from a young woman revolutionizing the foster care system to a photography phenomenon to a woman shaping social change through her non-profit focused on education for young girls in developing countries.
What are the main areas that Millennial women are looking for mentorship in?
During our conversations with women across the world, we started to see key themes emerge. We've based the Shape What's to Come community around four key pillars: music, fashion, art and media, and social change. As the community continues to grow, we'll focus on adding peer mentors for other areas that are important to this community of women.
Did you have a mentor in your early career? How did she or he shape your thinking about the role of mentors?
Early in my career, I thought of mentors as people who were accomplished in my field of work, and it was the sharing of their experience through advice and direction that helped me shape my own path. My first mentor, when I was just starting out in advertising, was a woman named Sherry Paul. The most valuable aspect of Sherry's mentorship was that she really believed in me. Her confidence in my potential gave me the courage to push my limits and to be innovative in the way I approached my work. I still have the hand written note she gave me for my first promotion!
The role of mentors as believers is still important, but now we see an opportunity for a new type of mentorship.The work we are doing at the Levi's® brand with Millennials has shown us that young women around the world now believe mentors can also be someone their own age who has experience in creating her own path amid the wide array of opportunities available to them. This led us to create a democratized form of mentorship that is peer to peer, one that is a two-way give and take experience with streaming perspective on shared interests in a communal forum.
Levi's® has a long history of progressive thought on women's issues -- starting with the launch of the first jeans specifically made for women. Can you give me a brief recap of some other corporate initiatives that focus on women worldwide?
For decades, Levi Strauss & Co. has been a leader in advancing equal rights across the globe. Because we're in the apparel industry, where the majority of workers are women, we have been focused on improving the lives of women in the communities where we do business. Through our philanthropic arm, the Levi Strauss Foundation, we have been providing grants and creating programs that better the lives of women throughout the world, whether it be by providing financial literacy and entrepreneurial programs or access health services and education. Over the past decade alone, these partner- ships have benefitted more than one million workers in 16 countries.