Melio’s mission is to keep small businesses in business, helping them to improve their cash flow and workflow, gain more control over their finances, and optimize their business’s financial health. Melio was founded by CEO Matan Bar, CTO Ilan Atias, and Ziv Paz in 2018, with headquarters in New York, an R&D center in Tel Aviv, and western U.S. headquarters in Colorado. The company has raised $506 million to date. Melio's smart B2B online payment solution is tailor-made for small business’s needs. It is a free, simple, and secure solution that allows small businesses and their suppliers to transfer and receive payments quickly and easily. But last week, they initiated something different- a mentoring program to help women in tech.

The program, called MentorMe, includes a series of group and personal meetings, discussions, and networking. The program was opened to women engineers in tech, and though they only anticipated a small number of women to apply, some 150 women from a variety of tech firms in Israel ended up signing up to participate as either a mentor or mentee. After examining their background and diversity, reviewing their application answers, technological expertise, and their compatibility with being a mentor or mentee, 50 women were chosen to take part in the initiative. Senior engineers were each assigned a junior engineer to mentor and start the learning process.

In addition to one-on-one meetings with their mentors, each mentee will participate in meetups focusing on different topics that can help their professional and personal development as engineers. Every meet-up will feature an influential woman from the industry who will share their experiences and knowledge. They include Karin Moscovici, a former VP of R&D at Riskified; Yael Karov, an entrepreneur and director of engineering at Google AI; and Inbal Orpaz, a journalist and founder of the #WomaninTech initiative.

The program, which is hosted in Melio’s offices, was created by Melio for the community of female programmers and not just for the company’s employees in recognition of the great shortage of women in technological positions, especially in tech management positions.

To try and help alleviate the shortage, Melio decided to help women at the beginning of their careers recognize the challenges they will face along the way and thereby make it easier for them to achieve positions in tech management. Revital Ziv, Melio's employer brand manager and initiator of this program explained to Geektime that "There is a lack of women in tech roles - and the scarcity is even bigger when looking at women in senior tech positions. So, I thought a good way to address this problem would be to help junior women engineers understand the different obstacles they are likely to encounter along the way and create a strong network of mentorship and sponsorship to help them achieve their goals. Personally, I was always very hands-on in terms of navigating my own career, not waiting for opportunities to come along but creating them myself. I think this is something that can help many women in their careers, and this is one of the topics we are covering in this program,"

Melio hopes this measure will help solve a problem that is very much present in the job market. This is the first cycle of the program and judging by the number of enrollees the company understood there is a real need for this program and there will be more cycles later to reach as many programmers as possible at the start of their journey and help them in shaping their careers.