The young women coming up need something that AI cannot provide. They need someone who has been where they are. Who can see around corners. Who can tell them, with authority earned through experience, what matters and what does not.

That is mentorship. And it is more valuable now than it has ever been.

The reason is not complicated. AI gives everyone access to information. It does not give everyone access to wisdom. Information is abundant. Wisdom is scarce. The gap between what a 25-year-old can look up and what she needs to know is wider than it appears from the outside. AI fills the first gap. A mentor fills the second.

What has changed is the medium. Mentorship used to require proximity. You had to be in the same city. In the same building. In the same room. Now it does not. A WhatsApp message. A voice note. A shared document with AI-generated notes from a conversation. The relationship is the same. The channels are broader.

You can mentor more women than you could ten years ago. Not because you have more time. Because the tools make the time you have go further. AI can summarize a mentoring conversation. It can draft follow-up resources. It can organize your thoughts before a session so the time together is focused.

This is not about replacing the human element. It is about removing the friction around it. The mentoring itself — the listening, the questioning, the perspective-giving — is still 100% human. Everything around it gets faster.

If you have considered mentoring and held back because you did not know how to start, or did not think you had time, or were not sure anyone wanted what you have: someone does. Start there.