Meet Jenn: Events and Community Engagement

In this week's episode, Devon and Sarah-Jane sit down with Jenn Powell, a self-described "Jenn of all trades."

Currently, Jenn coordinates events and training for clients across the postsecondary education industry in Canada. But how did she get there?

In this chat, we hit on some great nuggets of info:

• Surviving never working in the thing you studied for
• Taking education on a continuing basis while working
• Understanding how postsecondary education works by working in postsecondary education
• The benefits of regular networking, plus having the guts to reach out to a potential employer when they post on LinkedIn about an employee leaving
• Leaning into curiosity and asking questions to find out how many different versions there might be of a career you want to pursue
• Doing something for fun, even if it didn't work out to be your career

Resources:

Brainstorm Strategy Group

Transcript

Welcome to The One About Careers with Devon and Sarah-Jane. The Career Podcast for Adults involves 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 in different fields. New episodes available every week at theoneaboutcareers.com.

Welcome to the One About Careers with Devon and Sarah Jane. Have we got a good
episode for you today, folks? Devon and I are wandering down a fabulous path of
talking to people who actually work. Just getting into What they do?
So Devon, who's on the fabulous hot seat today? Today, we are going to be chatting
with Jenn Powell. Jen is the Director of Programming and Community Engagement for Brainstorm Strategy Group, which actually happens to be one of my favorite
organizations aside from my own. So, welcome Jenn. Thank
So excited you're here. I actually do refer to brainstorm in my book, Lost and
Found, An Adult's Guide to Empowering Teens to Make Their Best Career Decisions.
And I recommend whenever I do a speaking engagement to do with that topic, because
brainstorm has amazing information.
And we may or may not get there today. We're really all about Jenn. So, Jenn,
how did you get to where you are now?
Well, it definitely took a lot to get where I am and by no means has my career
progression been linear. I had no idea what I wanted to do while I was in high
school in terms of even the classes I wanted to pick for the next semester, let
alone deciding whether I wanted to go to college or university, but I had the marks
to be able to go to both. I was a first -generation student, single parent was my
mum, so didn't have a whole lot of money, didn't have a lot of help with guidance
in terms of like guidance counseling and things like that, or even family and
friends that could help me figure these things out. So I used the old eeny-meeny-miny-moe, if you know that one, to choose my first program based on the one class that I
had taken that I really liked, which was Law in grade 12. And I picked Law Clerk,
a two -year diploma, thinking it was kind of like a lawyer, which is really what I
thought might have been a good fit, but I didn't have the time or the money to be
able to do that. And I finished that program up, graduated with honors,
also tutored some folks, and I didn't do that career for one minute. I actually met
someone through my placement who knew someone that was working at a university,
and they actually offered me a job after my placement was done, and I said, "No,
thanks." But, you know, if you know anybody that's hiring, that's not in this type
of business, let me know. And that's how I kind of fell into education. From there,
I did that for a short stint. It was in the research area and life sciences. I
didn't take a whole lot of science in high school, so a lot of what the folks
that were in research were discussing sounded like another language to me. And they
actually referred me to someone else who was hiring that I worked in a not -for
-profit and I started working in a public policy there as an assistant and also
helped out at some events and then the lady who ran the events at the public
policy place I was working at said I did a really good job at events then why
don't I move over to her team so I did that and then I moved over to the college
back into the higher education sector because of my experience in events,
so now my diploma has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm doing. And I also did
quite a lot of certificates and post-grads and things like that throughout my time
working, just part-time to get through those. And yeah,
I ended up in higher education. I started out as an event planner, and then while
I was event planning, I think I made it six months into that role. I met a whole
lot of people because I was planning events for the school, and the recruiters said,
"Hey, you'd be a really good recruiter "going to the high schools "and meeting all
the students. "You should come work with us." So I worked with them, and then I
did admissions, and then I didn't like that. So then I worked as a student advisor,
which is kind of like a guidance counselor in higher education and then they moved
me into field placement, which was helping people find career opportunities within
their program, not like their final jobs. Then I got really good at that and then
Devon left her job. I moved into that role and then that actually led me to where
I am now. I I took a microprudential through Brainstorm and loved the folks and
what they did there and saw a post by the president who said that they were really
happy for this employee who got this new job, but very sad for them. So I very
quickly looked at what they did on LinkedIn and was like, "Ooh, I can do that."
And I reached out to him and we had a couple two -hour conversations, which were
supposed to be half an hour. And here I am. So yeah, a little bit of ebbing and
flowing and just being really curious and saying, yeah, can you, can you tell me
what your current job is? Like what definitely shared with us the title, but you
know, like most folks, I have a vague idea, but right. So yeah,
I can, I can do that. So my, my my company, Brainstorm Strategy Group, we kind of
look at higher education as an ecosystem and that you need to get the right
students into the right programs with the right supports to then be really excited
for the jobs that they're hopefully going to finish with, and then want to get
hired from their final field placements or as new grads. And so I,
for the most part, work with our higher education partners to help them bring all
the different best practices and things that they're doing within their own schools
to the forefront at conferences through training programs and things like that and to
share with one another so that we can help elevate the higher education sector and
help students succeed within their experiences. So that's what I do.
And I run conferences and training programs and social media and marketing and
communications and, and, and a little bit of everything.
Yeah, a little bit of everything. I'm a Jenn of all trades.
Um, what's something that you really, really like about your work? So it wraps
absolutely everything that I've ever done into one pretty bow. Um,
the event planning side of the house, the community building, working with all of
the different guidance counselors and the different community partners within the
college that I did that for quite some time. And yeah, it's really taken all of my
skill sets and put them into one job. And there's a ton of variety, which is also
a big one for me. I don't like doing the same thing day in and day out. And I
can assure you that it is never the same any day.
Yeah. - I wanna go back to something you said, it took a lot, you said it took a
lot to get here. What do you mean by it took a lot? - It took a lot out of me
and it took a lot of effort. So I wanted to be an interior designer when I was
done school and I'm talking high school. And I saw my mom who had been a stay at
home mom and then ended up working in customer service for a while. And she said,
Oh, Jenn, no one's going to take into your design advice from a 17 year old, go
get a job where you know you're going to make money. And so I was like, Oh, okay,
then. So at the time, I think it was Ally McBeal was a really popular show.
She was a law clerk.
Yeah But I always felt as though and I guess this is a big thing for me is that
I always felt as though I had a bigger capacity than what I was able to do and I
didn't know, you know that I should have gone to university I didn't know, you know
all those jobs that were out there because you really only know what you're shown,
right? There's those 10 careers that everybody can name off of their fingers and
it's because you've interacted with them at some point in your life and once I
started learning about things at the college it made me so excited to be able to
go to all those classrooms and say hey have you guys heard of this program do you
know they do this and then they'll go in oh no no idea and then it's just gotten
bigger from there so I was I loved being able to make a difference at a school
but being able to make a bigger difference in the whole sector is just like the
bee's knees. It's awesome. Yeah.
- I'm curious and I mean this probably ties into later questions as well, but when
you think back to your mom's advice, nobody's gonna take design tips from a 17 year old. How do you feel about that? Like are you so glad she said that? Are you
like, dude, I can't believe you said that to me. How does that ring in your head
now? I totally get her perspective and I still see that and I think that if I had
tried to go and start my own interior design company at 17 that may have been
something that wouldn't have done so well but she didn't understand all the different
areas within interior design where I could have definitely started a career and maybe
one day you know gone into my own excuse me my own business but because That was
her experience and her knowledge of what interior designers did That's what she was
she was trying her best, but in hindsight a hundred percent I wish that she had
been like yeah, get it go try and Well, now I do it in my house.
I do it for my friends So I'm still gonna get a little bit out of it, but not
in the way that I had hoped to when I was 17
Fair. Um, is there anything that you dislike about your work or your industry?
Red tape.
Oh, so define that a little more. What does that look like in your world and how
much of your day or week or month do you actually spend with that?
Yeah, so I wouldn't say that I am the one with the red tape anymore. Previously,
when I was working in higher education, there was red tape from your toes all the
way to the top of your head in terms of the policies, all the different governance
structures, the bureaucracy, like all of those pieces. In addition to being unionized,
that was a whole other level, right? Where the union dictates what your job
descriptions are, the things you're allowed to do, the things you're not allowed to
do what you're privy to, what you're not privy to. So in higher education in
general, I find that for myself to be the biggest barrier and a lot of why I left
working directly within higher education. But I still do see it all the time when
we're trying to get certain things off of the ground and, you know, things aren't,
you know, with the perfect little bow yet when we really would like to get certain
things out there that it can't because of, you know, bureaucracy, because of
politics, because of whatever it may be. So I'd say it's still part of my world,
just not my job specifically. Yeah.
- What is something that has surprised you along your career
And networking, I had no idea how important it is to never burn a bridge and to
always stay curious and to just go for it.
Because really if I do think back, other than my first job when I worked at
McDonald's and I handed in an application and I crossed my fingers. Every single
other job I've ever obtained has been at least through networking in some way,
in shoulder tapping someone that I know and saying, you know, I'm moving here, do
you know anybody who works in anything that could be somewhat close to what might
fit for my skill set? And that's how I've gotten really all the opportunities.
Yes, I've applied, yes, I've had to do that piece as well, but the networking has
been I think the make or break. So I'd say that's probably the most surprising. So
knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your teenage self?
Well, I would have told myself to go for it, right? What it what it was in my
heart that, you know, a shot, what you go for. What would have been your first
step, do you think?
If I was doing it properly. Yeah, if you were, if you're doing interior design,
what do you think you would have done after high school? I would have done some
research. I would have looked into what interior designers do versus what I thought
they did. I would probably have looked at the yellow pages back in the day.
I think the internet might have been a thing then. No, not, I'm just joking, but
probably like reached out to a few people and just asked them, you know, what a
day in the life is, could I shadow, you know, learn a little bit more about what
you do before I jumped in with both feet doing the old Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe.
I think that would have been a good start. And probably would have also asked them
about other careers that were kind of in that realm, but maybe weren't exactly
interior design, just so that I could learn about other things that, you know,
touch on it, but maybe are a little bit different and could could have been of
interest too. But you don't know what you don't know. I want, I just want to throw
in a quick reflection because I hear out of your story, I hear, you know,
right out of high school, if you had different encouragement, you would have chosen
things differently. However, you're in a place right now where you're like, I love
my job, this is perfect, it's amazing, it's fantastic. And I find so often I talk
to people who are still in that headspace, and this is from the parent perspective,
they're still in that headspace of, I wish I'd had better advice at the time
because I would have made different choices, and they skip the part where they go, except my life's pretty good right now. And I think that's such a huge piece for
people to take out of this, like even if you don't, you know, do that thing that
you're thinking, oh, I really wish I had that doesn't mean you made all the wrong
choices. Like there's so much nuance to this stuff and I love your story because I
think it tells it really, really well. It tells that nuance piece really well. And
if you want to prove something to someone, let it be yourself. Like I, I didn't go
back to university and do post -grad certificates because it's like I should have
gone, I know I could have gone and I nailed it and I was like that's right this
girl could do university she did do it all the whole thing but knew that I could
so there's always that opportunity to prove to yourself if you do change your mind
and you're not stopped you what is it like you get I don't know 11 careers over
the course of your life or something like that now Yeah, I don't even know what
the number is anymore, but you know what you start with is 1000 % not going to be
what you finish with or if it is you're going to do another like 20 careers in
the middle and then go back to that thing. I think you probably like do you have
a sense of how long you stayed in each position? Well I have my LinkedIn profile
we could look at that but I would say that uh probably
maximum, maybe about six years, I would say, would be my long distance.
Yeah. Yeah. About five years. Once I felt I learned the majority of the role, I'd
done it for a couple of rounds, I'd rejigged it a couple times, and then I started
to get bored. And I'm the type of person that likes change. So my brainstorm has
me for a few more years. And then I'll see you later.
We won't tag them when we post links to this.
Yeah, and I think it would have been a disservice to the employer as well as to
myself to have stayed and potentially been disgruntled or not enjoyed what I was
doing. It wouldn't have been good for them and it wouldn't have been good for me
and. But that's kind of more the person that I am. I'm not one not one to stay
in something that isn't a good fit for the sake of doing so. And that's probably
also some privilege that I have the ability to be able to do that. But I think
it's the right move if you can. Don't stay if it's not serving you or who you're
working for. - Awesome, well, not no, we'll wrap up this episode of the One About
Careers. We look forward to seeing you in our next episode.

Thanks for listening to the One About Careers podcast. You can catch up with past
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