AD AGE: ADVICE IS NICE, BUT ADVOCACY IS BETTER

By Jennifer Harrington, Founder and CEO, HATCH. Originally published in Ad Age on March 23, 2026.

 

I spent the first decade of my career at a fast-growing startup agency, rising from intern to managing partner. The founder proactively shared every facet of the business: strategy, finance, new business, and client management. He was especially committed to helping women accelerate their careers. Without realizing it, he trained me to run a firm and gave me the keys to open my own.

At the time, I would have called him a mentor. But looking back, what he did went far beyond advice. He put me in rooms I hadn’t found my way into yet. He gave me high-visibility assignments working with high-profile clients. He advocated for me when I wasn’t there. He wasn’t just mentoring me. He was sponsoring me. And that distinction — between mentorship and sponsorship — is one our industry still doesn’t talk about enough.

This year, I was honored to be named to Inc.’s Female Founders 500 list. It’s a recognition I don’t take lightly, in part because it reminds me how few women in our industry are agency owners.

The numbers tell a familiar story. Women make up 55 percent of the advertising and PR workforce and nearly 60 percent of CMOs on the client side. But when it comes to agency ownership, fewer than 1 percent of agencies are women-owned. As Christy Hiler, founder of the Own It community for female agency leaders, puts it: When more women are at the helm of agencies, the industry changes for the better. Our pipeline gets women in the door. But the ladder up — especially to agency ownership — is missing rungs.

The reason has a lot to do with the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. A mentor talks to you about your career, offering guidance, perspective and a sounding board. A sponsor talks about you when you’re not in the room. They advocate for your advancement and put their own credibility on the line to open doors. Harvard Business Review calls it the “ABCD” of sponsorship: amplifying achievements, boosting visibility, connecting to opportunities and defending in tough moments.

The data shows women aren’t getting enough of either, but the sponsorship gap is especially stark. McKinsey’s 2025 Women in the Workplacereport found, for example, that women at every level are less likely than men to have a sponsor and that entry-level women face the steepest gap of all. Even when entry-level women do have a sponsor, they’re promoted at lower rates than men. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 89 women make that same move. As leadership researcher Herminia Ibarra has observed, women are consistently over-mentored and under-sponsored, equipped with knowledge but lacking the advocacy that converts potential into promotion. This matters especially now, as some companies pull back on the very programs — sponsorship, flexible work, targeted development — that have helped accelerate progress for women.

I collect mentors like stones, from my mom to my early clients, to the extraordinary circle of women agency owners who kept each other afloat through COVID. Mentorship has been vital at every stage. But when I look at the moments that actually changed my trajectory, it was sponsorship that made the difference. It was a few past clients who called when I went out on my own. It was people who passed along a lead, made an introduction or put my name forward.

Those weren’t acts of advice. They were acts of advocacy.

If we want the leadership of our industry to reflect its workforce, we need to move beyond mentorship as a default and start thinking about what it means to actively sponsor the women around us. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Make the call and take the call. The job market is tough, and it can be discouraging. Welcome young women into the fold, make introductions, and help them build their own network by sharing yours.

Make ownership visible. Young women in marketing can’t aspire to what they can’t see. I mentor emerging women creatives through Massachusetts College of Art’s entrepreneurship program and one thing I’ve learned is that representation is its own form of advocacy.

Say their names — loudly. Nominate women for awards, and share information so others can do the same. Recommend them for boards, ask them to chair important committees. Make space to recognize leaders and pull out a chair so the world can see them in action.

Create return ramps. Women leave the workforce and want to come back. One of my own team members came to HATCH after stepping away from her agency job for several years to support her daughter’s skating career. We were her launch pad back, and she went on to become talent director at one of the largest agency networks in the world.

Pass along the client, not just the advice. In the agency world, the most powerful act of sponsorship is often the most practical: Connect a woman who’s starting out with a client, a vendor or a lead. Open more doors than you close.

This Women’s History Month, I’m thinking less about advice and more about action. The talented women of advertising are already here. Let’s not just mentor them. Let’s sponsor them up the ladder.