Despite increases in the percentages of women medical school graduates and faculty over the past decade, women physicians and scientists remain underrepresented in academic medicine’s highest-level executive positions, known as the “C-suite.” Faced with a similar dilemma, the corporate world has initiated sponsorship programs designed to accelerate the careers of women as leaders. Although academic medicine differs from the corporate world, the strong sponsorship programs that have advanced women into corporations’ upper levels of leadership can serve as models for sponsorship programs to launch new leaders in academic medicine.