Top Performers Have Mentors. Future MDs Have Sponsors

If you’ve worked in investment banking for any amount of time, someone has likely told you: “Find a mentor.”

And that’s good advice. Mentorship matters. It helps you learn the technical craft, navigate expectations, build confidence, and understand how the industry works.

Many of the most successful bankers I’ve interviewed credit mentors with helping them through their early years, someone to pressure-test thinking, challenge assumptions, or provide grounding when the job feels overwhelming.

But there’s a truth every senior banker eventually learns:

Mentorship may get you started, but sponsorship is what moves you forward.

Because as you move toward VP, Director, and MD territory, technical excellence and hard work are no longer enough. At that level, success becomes less about what you can do and more about who trusts you to do it and is willing to put their name behind yours.

Greg Rodgers, Partner at Latham & Watkins, captured the distinction perfectly:

“A sponsor is someone with cache inside the organisation, someone willing to lend their political capital to your advancement.”

And that shift changes everything.

Mentors Advise. Sponsors Act

A mentor can be supportive, generous, and insightful but their role is advisory. A sponsor does something fundamentally different: They bet on you.

• They speak up in the rooms that matter.

• They attach their reputation to yours.

• They pull you into deals, relationships, and opportunities that accelerate momentum.

As one leader put it: “Not every mentor is a sponsor and not every sponsor is a mentor.”

A mentor may care about you. A sponsor is invested in you. And the relationship is rarely emotional or reflective — it’s strategic. As Rodgers noted:

“It’s more transactional. You become indispensable, and the sponsor backs you.”

Why Sponsorship Matters. Especially in Banking

Investment banking celebrates performance but promotions are rarely driven by output alone. The industry is competitive, high-stakes, and deeply relational. And everyone inside knows it:

“Investment banking is political. It’s not just the person who models the best or works the hardest.” 

Justine Mannering, Managing Director at TD Cowen

Sponsors help you navigate the invisible architecture of progress:

• Who gets the right deal experience

• Who earns client exposure

• Who is perceived as leadership-ready

• Who stays visible and relevant

For many, sponsorship becomes the difference between advancement and plateau. It’s especially critical for talent historically overlooked, including women. As Maren Winnick, Snr MD at Evercore shared:

“Sponsorship is so important, especially for getting more women moving up the ranks.”

Visibility isn’t automatic. In some cases, it must be engineered deliberately.

How to Earn a Sponsor (Not Request One)

Here’s the part most people misunderstand:

You don’t ask for sponsorship. You earn it.

Sponsors choose candidates who operate like a future version of themselves: reliable, thoughtful, commercially minded, and trustworthy under pressure.

Across conversations, three key themes emerged:

1. Become Indispensable

“The best way to secure a sponsor is to become so valuable they can’t operate without you.” Greg Rodgers.

If you consistently deliver excellence without being managed, you become a credible investment.

2. Demonstrate You Deserve Advocacy

Justine Mannering said it plainly:

“You have to show somebody you deserve that support.”

Not perfection but consistency, awareness, and ownership.

3. Choose Alignment Intentionally

Trying to work for everyone means no one feels responsible for your progression.

Rodgers warned: “You need someone with enough juice to push you forward.”

Sponsors must be positioned and motivated to champion you.

Final Thoughts

Mentorship builds capability. Sponsorship builds careers.

If mentorship answers: “How do I improve?”

Sponsorship answers: “Who will take a professional risk to help me step into the next level?”

So the real question isn’t: “Do I have a mentor?”

It’s:

Who believes in me enough to put their reputation behind my potential?

And am I operating like someone worth sponsoring?

Because in investment banking, careers don’t accelerate by accident. They accelerate when someone influential decides you’re ready and is willing to say so when you’re not in the room.

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