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On Tuesday night, Hollywood heavyweights and their future colleagues gathered together for cocktails and meaningful conversation in Hancock Park to celebrate 15 years of The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>\u2019s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program. The program<\/a>, put on in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles<\/a> and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, works to pair young women from under-resourced high schools across Los Angeles with powerful female executives in entertainment.<\/p>\n The backyard of a private L.A. home buzzed with laughter and chatter as mentors and former mentees caught up on both their professional and personal lives. \u201cI think it\u2019s so special to see people wanting to pay it forward, to see people so invested in it,\u201d said 2013-14 mentee Paola Franco, now an executive on Netflix\u2019s drama development original series team. \u201cI spoke to so many people tonight who were like, \u2018I was 16 and had no idea where life was going to take me.\u2019 I wish that I had somebody who really steered me in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n For Franco, that person was former Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke, who was then president of entertainment at NBC. Salke mentored Franco when she was a 16-year-old student at City Honors Preparatory High School, who dreamed of being an intelligence agent. But her dreams changed once she saw Salke (who later officiated Franco\u2019s wedding) in action. \u201cI had very loving and supportive parents, but I didn\u2019t know anybody in the industry,\u201d Franco recalled. \u201cAnd Jen really was that person who came into my life and lifted the veil and was like, this is a world that you can be part of, this is a career. Seeing her in her element was really life changing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertising professional Katherine Haro, a mentee from the 2018-19 cohort, credits her mentor Dee Dee Myers, then the executive vp worldwide corporate communications at Warner Bros., for giving her the confidence to be her own advocate.\u00a0 \u201cJust always trust yourself,\u201d Haro said of what she learned. \u201cDo right by you. And I think that I\u2019ve always been able to implement that into my day to day. Every decision that I make, I truly do have my back.\u201d<\/p>\n WIE \u2014 which celebrated both the 2025 graduating class and its new crop of mentees at THR<\/em>\u2018s Women in Entertainment<\/a> event on Wednesday \u2014 doesn\u2019t just offer young women an entr\u00e9e into Hollywood, it also shows them the plethora of career paths available in the entertainment industry. \u201cOften young women come into the program that don\u2019t know what they want to do, or maybe they want to go into medicine or law or something else, and they see all of these really cool careers and learn how you can do anything in the entertainment industry,\u201d said Lauren Plichta, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. \u201cOnce they identify, \u2018Ooh, I really like this and I want to look into that,\u2019 then their mentors have that pathway to connect them and network and make sure that they get that interview, which is so hard right now to even secure.\u201d<\/p>\n The hands-on approach mentors take with mentees is also the reason for the program\u2019s lasting success. \u201cBiweekly, I would go to Warner Brothers to see Dee Dee. We got to tour Netflix, we got to tour Universal, it was so fun,\u201d Haro says. \u201cI remember when we went to the Universal lot, I got to hang out with the E.T.! I was like, oh my God! E.T.<\/em> was like my favorite movie as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n Mentees also get to observe the nitty-gritty of life in the Hollywood fast lane. \u201cI was basically a fly on the wall,\u201d Franco said of her year with Salke. \u201cIf she was going to a table read, I was at a table read with her. If she was going to a set visit, I would be there. If she was in an internal meeting with her team, I would be sitting in there. If she was on the phone with an agent, I\u2019d be in the room hearing her navigate and greenlighting a show.\u00a0Seeing her doing very exciting things and having that front row seat was really life changing. And I think it allowed me to really understand, wow, this is a career.\u201d<\/p>\n The program is equally rewarding for the mentors.\u00a0 \u201cWe went through the entire college application process together,\u201d Project Runway<\/em> producer and BBBSLA board member\u00a0Jane Cha Cutler said of her mentee. \u201cMy little Angelica got a full ride scholarship to Berkeley. I\u2019m going to brag a little!\u00a0We went to museums, we went to eat, we went to the office. It\u2019s just about spending time together, giving somebody your attention. It is really one of the most valuable things you can do. That experience gave me as much or more than I think it gave to Angelica.\u201d<\/p>\n And as the close-knit crowd last night suggested, the bonds made between mentor and mentee often last far beyond their year-long paring. \u201cWe are determined to stay very connected to our kids and to our community by making sure that everyone knows that this is going be a family that\u2019s going to keep loving you and supporting you and being with you for the rest of your life,\u201d Row K Entertainment president, mentor and outgoing BBBSLA Board Chair Megan Colligan told the gathering. \u201cBecause we have the power and the energy to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Tuesday night, Hollywood heavyweights and their future colleagues gathered together for cocktails and meaningful conversation in Hancock Park to celebrate 15 years of The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s Women in Entertainment Mentorship Program. The program, put on in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, works to pair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2185967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[421596,421593,21741,421597,22860,34395,348411,22693,421594,421595],"class_list":["post-2185966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-city-honors-preparatory-high-school","tag-dee-dee-myers","tag-entertainment","tag-hancock-park","tag-hollywood","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-jennifer-salke","tag-los-angeles","tag-paola-franco","tag-young-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/The-Hollywood-Reporters-Women-in-Entertainment-Mentorship-Program-Celebrates-15.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185968,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185966\/revisions\/2185968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}