Executives often take someone under their wing to mentor. But Joan Coraggio has taken that one step farther, serving briefly as mentor to a women’s sports activist from Mexico.

Coraggio, 52, group director of sponsorship and experiential marketing for Saatchi & Saatchi in Torrance, has participated in a unique sports mentoring program set up by the U.S. State Department in collaboration with ESPN-W, the women’s sports channel subsidiary of Walt Disney Co.

Each year, they pick 16 women from different countries who are using sports as a platform for social change. Those women then spend three weeks with executives at Saatchi or one of the Disney units, receiving guidance for their social action endeavors. Coraggio was intrigued by the program’s global focus and signed on as a mentor right when it began five years ago.

This year, she was assigned Paola Kuri from Mexico City, a woman in her late 20s who is trying to set up a soccer program for women and girls.

Coraggio spent three weeks helping Kuri develop and hone an action plan to get the soccer program set up. Unlike her mentees in past years, Kuri is already a well-established figure in Mexico.

“She’s kind of become the voice for women’s soccer in Mexico,” Coraggio said. “She’s already so established in sports circles and on social media that sometimes I’ve been tempted to give her my mentoring chair so she can teach me.”

Outside the office, Coraggio took Kuri to L.A. Galaxy soccer games and even to her high school-age daughter’s water polo games.

“My daughter has so much opportunity to play sports here; those opportunities do not exist for girls in other countries. It reminds my daughter and really all of us here how lucky we are,” Coraggio said.

Staff reporter Howard Fine contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Jonathan Diamond. He can be reached at [email protected].