ERIC NEWELL, P.ENG… …good advice helped him achieve his dream of making a difference, not only as a businessman but as a community leader. Here, he receives a ribbon shirt in honour of his work with Aboriginal groups
Ingrid Pederson, P.Eng. Edmonton • APEGA Outreach volunteer
and he later became the CEO. I was in the process of finishing my MBA, and we were talking about my career options over lunch. I had a choice to make: return to my job at Imperial Oil, take a new job with an international consulting company, or branch out on my own. I asked him what I should do. He told me: “Kim, there are some people who excel by being a little fish in a big pond, and there are some people who excel by being a big fish in a little pond. You’re a big-fish-in-a-little-pond kind of person.” This really made me think about which direction I wanted to go in and where I wanted to end up. What was going to make me happy? It helped me see that there are people who do really well in big, multinational organizations, who work their way up and feel very comfortable in those places. And there are people who want to work in smaller organizations and be a much bigger part of a smaller organization. That’s me. I’m an entrepreneur — I’ve built up my own businesses and I love to work in smaller organiza- tions: start them and build them. So being a big fish in a little pond was definitely the way to go for me. I decided to take Doug’s advice that day and I’ve never looked back. And it’s worked out great.
• recipient of the province’s Stars of Alberta Volunteer Award • recipient of the Minerva Mentoring Award for Women in Science and Innovation from the Alberta Women's Science Network I can’t recall any memorable advice from a specific person, but I've gone through enough bumps in my career to have learned some valuable lessons. Often, figuring out what you don’t like can be just as helpful in guiding your career path as stumbling into a dream job. Life is too short to work in a job you don’t enjoy, so if the bad days outnumber the good days, it is time to move on, even if it feels like you have to start over. However, that work experience doesn’t mean you've wasted your time — you have likely developed skills that will come in handy later on in your career. Right before my last year of university I did a work term in a traditional process engineering job and disliked it enough to decide I had picked the wrong discipline to study. At the same time I did not want to try to switch disciplines and spend a couple more years in school. Instead, when I graduated I purposely chose a completely different type of engineering job from the usual jobs available to chemical engineering graduates. Since graduation, I’ve worked on four continents and had an interesting and challenging engineering career.
(Left) INGRID PEDERSON, P.ENG… …if you don’t enjoy your work, don’t be afraid to start over to find your dream job
SPRING 2016 PEG | 47
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