When I graduated from high school in 1999 I was a crew chief at a local McDonald’s. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life at that time, just that I was going to enjoy my first summer out of school.
Fast forward a few months and I quickly realized that my fast food job wasn’t going to be as financially beneficial as I would like. Don’t get me wrong, the experience I gained was fantastic, but I knew it was time to move on.
In early 2000 I was hired at Grand & Toy in Vancouver entering fax orders in a time where online ordering and e-commerce hadn’t quite caught on yet. Although the dot com bubble was bursting at the time many people were telling me to get into e-commerce as it was ‘the next big thing’. I had taken some information technology classes in high school so I thought this may be the path for me. I enrolled in an introduction to internet and online media at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. It was a great course but I realized after completion that this was not a field you could keep up with part time.
After moving up into higher customer service-related roles at Grand & Toy I made the jump into inside sales in 2005. I was fortunate that the company saw the potential in me and paid for me to attend BCIT to take their Inside Sales and Marketing course. I had found my calling and now realize this was the turning point of my professional career.
The ability to be creative and adapt to a change in the way our industry approached customers and prospects allowed me to excel in my role. In 2007, I was promoted to an outside sales role in downtown Vancouver. In 2012 I was promoted to a key account manager role managing accounts in the public sector. Most recently I was promoted to Key Account Manager, Healthcare managing public and private healthcare accounts throughout British Columbia.