Meet Amanda: Events Maven

Join Devon and Sarah-Jane for a chat with Amanda Donovan, who is the Activities Coordinator for St. Paul's Anglican Church in Charlottetown, PEI. (A job she would never have expected to be doing!)

While much of her job is about event management, and she gets to lean into her love of events and building connections, we got pretty philosophical about life and careers at the end!

Along the way, some other great tidbits about careers came out:

• Recognizing the common thread about you that shows up in different areas of work, volunteering and life
• Being able to identify skills that you have that are actually unique and marketable
• Finding a welcoming and accepting workplace
• Following your dream without it having to be your job
• The ongoing battle we all have to find your voice and have the courage to use it
• How your life view at a young age can shape your career decisions, even long after you've grown up.

A few links for ya:

Drawstring Productions on Facebook (Amanda's theatre company)

Holland College, PEI's community college

St. Paul's Anglican Church, Charlottetown, PEI

Transcript

Welcome to The One About Careers with Devon and Sarah Jane. A career podcast for adults involved with teens navigating life after high school. We help you help your teens make informed education and career decisions by providing quality information and resources. Join us for weekly, bite -sized conversations covering various aspects of careers, including insights from professionals and different fields. - New episodes available every week at theoneaboutcareers.com.

- Hello everybody, welcome back to The One About Careers.
We are continuing our series of interviewing folks about their jobs, Sarah Jane, how
are you? - I'm most awesome. I'm very excited. Oh,
oh, she's, she's always very excited. Would you like to introduce our guest today?
- I'd be honored, Devin. Today we have Amanda Donovan, and she is an activities
coordinator with St. Paul's Anglican Church in the bustling metropolis of
Charlottetown, PEI. - Hello.
- Hi. - Welcome Amanda.
- Hi, happy to be here. - Oh, we're glad you're here too. We're gonna start with
kind of the most basic thing, which is what do you even do? What's an activities
coordinator? - Great question. I'm the first one of my kind in the Anglican Diocese
of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. They kind of invented the position for me.
Basically, the church was growing, This was all before COVID, the church was growing
and they wanted to be able to have more events, more activities, more,
more like rental events, concerts, stuff like that. And they really,
and they were starting to grow online as well. There was a bit of an online
presence. And so they decided that they wanted to have someone kind of steer that
ship. And bring some,
I don't know, pizzazz, I guess, and that's what they got. They asked for pizzazz
and they got it.
So in regular day, what I would do, like there is absolutely some administrative
things that I do, I do answer emails, I do answer the phone, I do sadly have to
do spreadsheets sometimes, which everybody knows I hate. But the fun stuff that I do
is I create all of our online content. And since COVID,
we actually live stream our services. So I help out with that as well. We have a
couple of other people trained to do that also.
So I kind of work at creating not just informational stuff,
but actually help with the help of our rector John Clark, I helped to create an
online identity for the church and actively try to reach out beyond the Anglican
community and create a really safe space for everybody in every way,
in every shape and form. That St. Paul's online and in and is a place where
everyone is accepted, everyone is safe. And so I do concert rentals,
but I also do activities. Like we had a harvest festival earlier in the year, a
day of games for families. And we did a big feast, it was called the heavenly
feast. So it was a dinner hosted by angels. So I got us our costumes as well.
And so I like to do kind kind of twists on regular fundraisers.
I like to make it a little more interesting, a little bit wacky. Last year for
Good Friday, we did a theatrical presentation, so that was something really fun and
interesting. We had members of the parish from age six up to, I think,
I want to say about 60 within our cast, so that was super fun and if there's any
props or set pieces that need to be built, I do that as well. I'm a whiz with a
cardboard box
and I think that's it. I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting, but I think that's
a lot of, oh, I coordinate volunteers as well. So I recruit and schedule volunteers.
And I socialize everybody knows my name I make sure everybody knows my name and I
try to make sure I know absolutely everybody else's name as well make sure everybody
feels greeted and welcomed and appreciate it. You set the position was created for
you so can you backtrack a little about
where you were before there, like how you. Oh, I've been Awesome,
we love that.
I started out studying graphic design at Holland College. And I was in theater and
music and stuff like that as well. Graphic design, when you start studying it at 17
years old, when you're a country bumpkin, never been out on your own? Didn't end
well. I learned a ton, but I did not finish. I did not graduate. I went on to
have many years in all varieties of sales so I worked for an optometrist.
I sold cars for a while. I've worked in clothes and makeup and art and shoes and
I've sold all of the things. People recognize me all the time absolutely because I
have sold them something at some point in my life.
For about six years, I was at this wonderful little shop in downtown Charlottetown
called Luna Eclectic Emporium, one of the best places I've ever worked. It was so
much fun. But while I was there, the owner, who is amazing, Jennifer Ridgeway,
who also owns Boone's Now, she empowered me because she knew that it was a passion
of mine to do fundraisers. I have been doing these really wacky fundraisers in my
own time on the side with no budget. And so she empowered me to do that as part
of my role as manager of Luna. So I think we did a couple of them when I worked
there. But
that really solidified in me that I wanted to be doing work in nonprofit. I really
didn't want to be in retail anymore. I kind of put in my time and I'd learned all
that I could and it was on. So I applied for the event management course at
Holland College with a focus on event planning and I was accepted and I won a
scholarship and then I got hired at a nonprofit. So I did not go to Holland
College because this was a job that I had a short,
a short stay with a particular non -profit. Nice people, wasn't a good fit.
And then I, I, I sold wedding dresses for a little while,
just kind of as I was getting my feet under me again. And then I got hired at
the church. My husband encouraged me to apply for this job as activity coordinator
at an Anglican church, even though I am a lapsed Catholic. He's like, "Well, you go
for it. And they did, and they hired me. And COVID hit three weeks later.
And so everything had to pivot. So the plans that they had for me and the plans
that I had for them all changed on a dime. And it's been an evolution ever since.
Yep. And what's something that you I mean, I feel like you've alluded to it. But
what's something that you like about the work that you're doing and maybe even the
nonprofit field in general?
- What I really like about it, especially is the connections.
So I kind of see my position as a connection facilitator. So I create situations
where I can bring people together and make it easier for them to connect with each
other.
And I think that that's my very favorite thing. Like I love seeing people that
maybe wouldn't necessarily talk to each other. They're all of a sudden sitting
together playing checkers or, you know, they're both wearing a funny costume and
they're laughing together about it. And I just really love creating that environment
of connection. And
At my other time, I'm involved in theater and my friends and I actually just
started our own theater company, and that is also very much about creating
connections because we're connecting with each other, we're connecting with the
audience. And we're creating a situation where the audience can connect with each
other because they're sharing an experience while watching whatever it is that we're
producing. Very cool. That's the connection. That's what you am.
Very cool. What surprises you about the work that you do now?
That's a good question.
I think that I sometimes take it for granted because some of these things are
easier for me and it surprises me when other people are like, Oh my gosh, how do
you do this stuff? And I'm like, I'm just talking to people like I'm just, because
I'm very extroverted. And, and yeah, it sometimes surprises me how introverted so
many people are and how complicated that makes things for them.
And how grateful I am that that doesn't that doesn't affect me all that much,
although like everybody I give people that sometimes but for the most part I really
enjoy that. And also one thing that surprised me was being
able to adapt. I really when COVID hit I didn't know what we were going to do or
how we were going to manage and lots and lots of tears. Lots of tears like
everybody else in the world. And it really surprised me how the parish council,
the wardens, the community, they all really came together to support each other and
to really encourage and support me, even though they had just met me. And it was
such a wonderful surprise to have been so welcomed and so accepted into this
community in such a crisis, that sometimes in crisis people get really insular,
but for me like they just open their arms up instead of closing the door to be in
such a progressive community. I didn't expect that, I hoped, but I didn't guarantee
it to myself, but they really do walk the walk and talk the talk and they really
are as progressive and open -hearted as they should be. What advice would you give
to your teenage self if you think back to yourself at like 15, 16 years it's what
career advice would you give? Well more than just career advice for sure because she
didn't have a clue what she wanted to do at that time except she wanted to be an
artist and so she did end up doing that. I do feel like I am in the arts but I
think that the one thing that I would tell her back then that really has held her
has held me back in a lot of ways is being so preoccupied with other people's
opinions of who and what you are and specifically being very bogged down and
distracted by the male gaze and the importance of the male gaze in her and my life
and how it really never needed to drive me, you know,
but it did. and it really it really helped me back in a lot of ways because I
always wanted to be attractive to men and I wanted everybody to think I was pretty
and you know all of that stuff and it really really uh uh limited my ability to
be bold and brave and and that's what I think is the most important thing that
I've learned in my life and I wish that I could have told her just be brave, just
be bold. - But did you have a particular idea of what pretty meant and you weren't
meeting that idea? - Yeah, well, in school I was tiny and I had braces and like
long thin hair and I wasn't ugly or anything, but I felt like I was kind of
ordinary. And so I always wanted to be interesting and special.
And so when I got into my 20s, people started giving me that kind of attention and
that kind of feedback. And being a performer, there's nothing better than external
validation, right? That's healthy. And so I just got addicted to it,
like I just thoroughly got addicted to that external validation, that addiction lives
strongly in me still. That's what I get every time I'm on stage and people applaud,
I don't think that's going to change, but I think that I have started to be able
to shift that away from I'm getting validating validation from simply just my
appearance and nothing to do with my content.
Right. I think that I think that those applause on stage have more to do with my
content and my ability, you know, and so it is a shift. I appreciate you going
down that path, Amanda, because I think in today's age, you know,
with Instagram and TikTok, there's an illusion of whatever today's flavor is or sorry
this minutes flavor let's get let's really get minutes flavor and and it doesn't
matter whose gaze it is in our day and age it might have been the male gaze in
today's age it can be any like anybody whoever it that is that you're seeking
approval from you just hit like probably a fundamental life lesson.
Forget careers, folks. We've now moved on to the super advice group and it's that
fundamental deep within self inside yourself, validation and value and importance that
has nothing to do with parts or colors or shapes. Absolutely.
And it's fundamental to having,
for lack of a better word, a happy and satisfying life. Absolutely.
And so curse is often the surface thing. Yeah, I think it's often the expression of
what's really going on inside. I think there's a lot of truth in that and it's
amazing. I mean Sarah Jane and I have been doing this work long enough to see,
which we've never had this conversation, but I expect you to start nodding any
second, to see how often people's limited views of themselves,
that's what stops them from taking that course, taking that job, applying for that
thing, going after that promotion. It's not anything to do with skill. And so it's
just, it's always interesting doing this work because it's so much more than just,
what are your interests? What do you like to do, what are you good at? It really
comes down to how do you see yourself and how can you move through the world? And
in that way, how does that express out in the work and how you present to co
-workers, to people you volunteer with, to all those kinds of things? Yeah, I think
that's a nail on the head for me, for sure. Yeah, it's so funny when I do resumes
for people and I send it back and they're like, "Oh my gosh, this amazing.
And I'm like, I 100 % don't believe in lying. Like 100 % don't believe in lying.
Like, they're just words on a page, man. And they're all true. Like, they're
literally all true. And it's that we all seem to have trouble at something
recognizing that which we are, as you said, I loved Amanda, what you said about
what, what I'm just doing what I'm doing. I didn't know it was special, I'm just
doing what I'm doing. And that's, I think that's when everything's in alignment.
- I read a really wonderful book a few years ago that is perpetually on my
nightstand. It's the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. And I find her thoughts and
everything just so fascinating and so inspiring bringing people together and and being
really honest and vulnerable and all of those things are necessary in order to be
effective in events in particular in gatherings but I think that that kind of lays
out in all of our lives in and out of the office or shop or wherever it is that
you work. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, this was a conversation I don't think either of us
was expecting, but I love it. Absolutely love it. Thanks so much again for joining
us and sharing part of your story. I really appreciate it. - Thank you for inviting
me. I've had a lovely time.
- Stay tuned for the next episode of The One About Careers, where we'll have another fascinating interview.

- Thanks for listening to the One About Careers podcast. You can catch up with past episodes at TheOneAboutCareers.com. Join us next week for another bite -sized conversation.