My Career Story

Next Step Navigator is a career newsletter mixing real talk with real advice to help you tackle the job hunt and carve out your own unique path. It’s like grabbing a coffee with a mentor who shares stories and strategies to boost your confidence and guide you towards making strategic, meaningful career moves.

One of the most powerful ways to find motivation and gain insight into your own career journey can be to hear about someone else’s, so today I thought I’d share mine. 

I’m a career educator in a university, but I didn’t set out to be here as a new professional!

After high school, I pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance.  Yes, modern dance.  What on earth does that have to do with my current job as a career educator for undergraduate university students?!  Well, very little these days, but that’s okay!  Dance and theatre are my first (and eternal) loves and that’s what I wanted to pursue at the time.  

During my degree I had a chance to take a class on arts education and I was enthralled.  I always liked the idea of teaching and was curious about how teaching and dance could be combined outside a studio environment.  I also really connected to the professor and made it a point to stay in touch.

Fast forward to graduation and I already knew that the life of a professional dancer was not for me.  I decided to attend a teacher education program and see where that could take me.  I knew I didn’t want to be a traditional classroom teacher, and was curious as to how I could combine teaching and dance.

I graduated teachers college and reconnected with my arts education professor from undergrad.  She put me in touch with an organization running artists-in-the-schools programming and I was hired as a contract visiting artist.  It was a very cool job, but just contracts, so I knew I didn’t want to do that forever.

After working as a visiting artist for a couple of years, I wanted more full-time employment.  I started doing intensive research on the arts education landscape in Toronto and found an arts-based leadership organization hiring for a lead teacher.  I applied and got the job and ended up working there for almost 6 years!  I had the chance to collaborate with artists across disciplines, have full-time employment and grow in my new found nonprofit career.  

After it was time for me to move on from that organization (I felt that I needed a change to stay motivated and engaged), I reached out to my network and discovered an Indigenous organization was hiring someone to run a career education and mentorship program.  I jumped at the chance - I had worked with the Indigenous community extensively in my previous role and wanted to continue in that work if possible.   

After two years with that organization, it became clear that the nonprofit industry was not going to serve me forever, with regards to pay, stability and professional development opportunities. I focused on researching roles at colleges and universities and eventually landed a job as a career educator and have been working in that field ever since!

That’s a lot of different jobs, right?? I started out as a dancer and am now advising university students.  And so many other things also happened that didn’t get mentioned!  College courses, volunteering, taking a mental health-related career break, service industry jobs and more.  

I prefer not to think about my career as a path, but rather a constellation of interesting experiences that have enriched me and shaped my life in ways I could not have anticipated.

What career lessons have you learned along the way?  How have you navigated transitions?  Let me know and share this with a friend!

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