Leah Adair
Age: 33

Career:

Title of occupation: 4 months as a Project Coordinator in Corporate Strategies  Previously, I was a Business Services Advisor.
Company: Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD)
Length at position: 5 years at the company but was just promoted as a Project Coordinator
Hours worked per week: 40-45 hours
Salary range: $60,000
Potential: $65,000
Best part of job: I am responsible for a project, where I’m allowed to take something from beginning to end. One project I was involved with, I was speaking to all levels of people in the organization (about 1000), and so I really got to know the internal operations.
Other career choices: I have a background in Commerce and Environmental Management, where I was assigning costs and benefits. Today, we are seeing more companies move towards sustainability (i.e. Olympics), understand business, and learn how to manage the impact to the environment. Corporate Social Responsibility manager, Sustainability manager, Environmental manager

 

Education:
Degree(s): Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Alberta, Masters of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary (specialty: Environmental Management), CMA designation (Sept 2005)

Benefits of CMA: You learn presentation skills, corporate strategies, and a CMA does open doors. It’s tough to say whether I am where I am without it. It adds credibility. And you can understand accounting.
Advice: There is a lot more offered to you than just the accounting. You can learn that, but you can also have a career in so many other areas because you are taught the management side of things, which is one of the reasons why I pursued it. You develop a lot of different skills that you don’t in other programs - writing skills, presentation skills. And these can be applied to other industries.

 

Lifestyle:
Favourite recreational activity: Family, gardening, hiking

Upcoming vacation plans: not until summer. Usually we (the family) stay at a cabin in Vernon.

In five years, I see myself enjoying: Career wise – teaching, whether I do it full or part-time and doing some consulting where there is more independence and flexibility.