Wednesday, August 20, 2008

ECO Canada employee profile

ECO Canada
Job Title Manager, Environmental Career Transition Project
Started : May 1, 2008
Projects Worked on:
o ECTP

Education

B.Sc. in Ecology from the University of Calgary (2003)
MA in Anthropology/Primatology from the University of Calgary (2006)

Interview
1. What environmental organizations are you involved with?
I joined a Calgary network called Young Environmental Professionals (YEP) that meets once a month in Ceili’s for beer and presentations about the hot new topics in the environmental industry. http://www.yepcanada.ca/calgary.htm

2. Where else have you worked and what did you do there?
My last job was with the Calgary Health Region and the Dept of Family Medicine at the UofC where I worked as a research assistant. Our team worked with doctors and staff at community family medicine clinics across the city to empower them to find ways to improve their processes to reduce risks for patients and for themselves (reduce their risk of being sued for a medical error). We used quality improvement tools and worked with clinics to set goals, and determine and measure success.

My “job” before that was working on my Master’s degree in Anthropology. I studied the diet of black-and-white colobus monkeys in Ghana (C. vellerosus) and the effect of habitat change on the nutritional quality of the monkeys’ diet. In addition, I was a teaching assistant for several anthropology courses.

3. What do you do on a typical day at work?
I generally check and respond to emails first thing in the morning while drinking my much needed morning cup of coffee. My day is a mix of doing administrative things like project management, document writing, working with the ECTP contractor, and doing research related things like developing interview questions and marketing the project to employers and employees.

4. What would you consider to be your specialty or greatest skill in the workplace?
I think my research background is my biggest asset in the workplace since I have a solid background in both qualitative and quantitative research. This allows me to be flexible in my approach helps me determine which questions are best answered by either qualitative or quantitative methods.

5. What other skills can you offer to ECO Canada?
I am quite organized and I do a lot of event planning with my charity project True Vision Ghana (http://www.truevisionghana.org). This is something that helps me in my job as a project manager for ECO Canada when planning national steering committee meetings and other work-related events.

6. What is one thing that most people don’t know about you but you are particularly proud of?
I forced myself to do my first solo trip in 2004 through French West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) even though my spoken French was not strong. I booked a flight into Accra, Ghana for my 2 month volunteer stint at the monkey sanctuary but then booked my return flight out of Bamako, Mali. This forced me to at least travel between those 2 cities. I ended up traveling from the coast of Ghana all the way into the Sahara Desert ending at Timbuktu, Mali and had many crazy adventures in between.

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