#40 – As a teenager, Moe Abbas was a vastly different person than he is today. Unmotivated by school, it took getting beat up by some pot dealers at 16 for Moe to make the decision to improve his life. The change wasn’t immediate, but as he began to focus on improving his physical health, his education, and his relationships, opportunities began to present themselves to him The first opportunity was as an Assistant Phone Line Repair Technician, which allowed him to leave his hometown of Ottawa, ...
Jun 16, 2021•52 min•Ep. 40
#39 - Welcome to Career Crossroads very first update episode! This week, I decided not to release an interview as there have been some changes (all positive) in my life that I wanted to talk about. Instead, I recorded a 16-minute episode where I discuss my career and the future of the podcast. Firstly, last week I began a new job. Given the nature of the podcast and why I started it, I felt it was important to talk about why I shifted roles at this point in time. I provide some insight into why ...
Jun 09, 2021•17 min•Ep. 39
#38 - For Josh Zettel going to university was an obvious step, but what to do after graduating with a degree in Psychology and Philosophy was less obvious. As he was considering social work, he got a job working at House of Friendship, a non-profit homeless shelter that also provided other programming for the local community. This role helped him realize that while he wanted to help people and be able to connect, social work was not the right path and he ended up leaving House of Friendship afte...
Jun 02, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 38
#37 - Today on career Crossroads I talk to Jason Yap, a professional dancer from Malaysia who is currently living and working in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. As a teenager, Jason had aspirations to become a basketball coach but realized quickly that was not a path likely to lead to success in Malaysia. As he decided to call quits on his basketball career, a new passion emerged: dance. With his athletic ability and competitive nature, he was drawn to the sport as it relied solely on his hard work a...
May 26, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 37
#36 – Growing up in New Delhi in her native India, Shelly’s family had a lot of say in the career path she chose. Despite that, Shelly was committed to working in the hospitality industry and pushed back against her family’s concerns. When she was accepted into the Institute of Hotel Management in Gangtok, her father relented, and off she went. An internship at the Taj Mahal Hotel led to a career in the Food and Beverage department at other luxury hotels like The Imperial, serving clients like A...
May 19, 2021•59 min•Ep. 36
#35 – Matt Sonnenberg is a man who isn’t afraid to try things. He tries something new, learns a valuable lesson, and then moves onto something else. This is a pattern that started with his childhood paper route but and continues with the multiple revenue streams he manages today. His journey takes us through two different attempts at post-secondary education; a path that eventually led him to specialize in brass instrument repair. After a failed solo repair business, Matt ended up at a larger mu...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 54 min•Ep. 35
#34 - Steve Tyson (a.k.a Tyson) has had something like 27 different jobs in his life. From selling peanut butter cups when he was 10 so he could buy a Nintendo Gamecube, to founding Karbon Brewing Company in 2020, Tyson has often had a motivation behind each job he’s worked beyond just making money. After a number of paths through post-secondary education and a number of jobs working in stadium events management, Tyson moved into the hospitality industry where he saw a number of issues with the ...
May 05, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 34
#33 – How does someone with no university degree become an executive at Facebook? That’s the story of Victoria Graham’s career over the last 20+ years. Without a clear idea of her future during post-secondary education, Victoria drifted from one university to another and eventually found herself dropping classes for lack of interest. What was holding her interest? The candle store she was working at, where she was eventually promoted to manage one of their locations. The candle store led to a jo...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 33
#32 – Having literally circled the globe during the course of his career, and living in 8 countries along the way, Zach Desson would probably describe himself not as a nomad but as someone open to new experiences. Leaving his home town when he was 18 to volunteer in Peru is where his journey began before he headed back to Canada to start university as a political science student at Wilfrid Laurier University. After graduating, he spent some time working for the Red Cross but continued to look fo...
Apr 21, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 32
#31 – Hailing from the Cayman Islands, Lisa Hylton has always had a career where she crunched numbers, although who she was crunching numbers for has changed dramatically over time. After doing part of her university degree in Cayman, and then transferring to the University of Georgia to complete it, Lisa began her career in accounting with Pricewaterhouse Cooper. After establishing herself at home, she then sought to take her talents abroad via a PwC exchange program. After considering New York...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 31
#30 – Helen Hanison has lived a life of two careers. After stumbling a little as a teenager, she attended university at the age of 21 to get a degree in Media and Communications and after spending a term during her degree working at a high-profile Public Relations firm, she was hooked. This experience led to a long career working in PR in increasingly difficult positions, in multiple cities in her native England. Despite her success in the industry, it wasn’t an entirely smooth road. The fast-pa...
Apr 07, 2021•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 30
#29 - James Cridland knew from the time he was a teenager that radio and technology were two of his biggest passions. Given that, he had a fairly easy time deciding where to try and get hired after high school; a radio station. In a weird twist, early on in his career he was fired and rehired by the same person, but he realized that being the on-air talent full time didn’t allow him the creativity he desired. Using his other skillsets, over the next number of years he ran a radio station website...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 29
#28 – Jessica Bondy has always been a natural leader and from a young age she developed a passion for helping others. Towards the end of high school, as she tried to figure out what career path to go down, she flipped open a book about careers and landed on recreation therapist. Everything about the job seemed right so she set off to the University of Waterloo to begin her education. While excelling academically in her undergraduate degrees (she did two of them simultaneously), Jessica became he...
Mar 24, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 28
#27 – Kristy Bernardo is the woman behind the wildly successful blog The Wicked Noodle, however, being a professional foodie wasn’t always in her future. Growing up in small town Wisconsin, Kristy didn’t have s strong sense of what she should pursue after high school although it didn’t take long for her to find out that she excelled in retail. After 5 promotions in 5 months, she was managing her own store in another state by the age of 20! Next came a move to Southern California where she lived ...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 27
#26 – Christine Dainard is in a vastly different place now than she was when she left high school in her teens. After not getting her diploma, she became a top 10 salesperson, nationwide, for a Canadian exercise equipment retailer. It wasn’t because she was really good at convincing people to buy things - Christine was just really good at understanding people’s needs and with her friendly and energetic personality, she was able to find solutions to their problems. After having a child and going ...
Mar 10, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 26
#25 - Composer, voice actor, sound designer, host. These are some of the words you can use to describe what Lindsay Graham does in his current career as a full-time podcast creator. He's the man behind American History Tellers, American Scandal, Business Movers, and many other hit podcasts that are part of the Wondery network, however, podcasting has really only comprised the last handful of years of Lindsay's career. Prior to that, he worked in insurance sales, marketing, accounting, and a vari...
Mar 03, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 25
#24 – Early in her professional career in India, Priyanka Ojha has moved around a lot. It started when she got her degree in mechanical engineering and was quickly recruited by Bosch to work in their diesel engine pump division. But one year into that career, Priyanka decided to expand her professional credentials and began a Masters of Business Administration in Finance. That led her to jobs in business development and employee engagement before she packed up to move again – this time to German...
Feb 24, 2021•57 min•Ep. 24
#23 – Ivan Lu was driven by respect and competition to follow in his brother’s footsteps in a corporate career. To make that dream a reality he decided to get a degree in Commerce, something that would provide him with a variety of opportunities when he graduated. While in university, his internships/co-op experiences helped him realize that some of what he was studying was just not that interesting. He did not want to sit in a room and crunch numbers so upon graduating he tried to find a job wi...
Feb 17, 2021•46 min•Ep. 23
#22 – Chris Johnson has an idyllic life working at his own skate shop, Passion Board Shop, in Eau Claire Wisconsin. But when he was 18, life didn’t look like it was heading in that direction. With an interest in sales, Chris decided to study business at the University of Minnesota Duluth but quickly decided the degree was unnecessary. As he had learned working at a Zoomies store in his teens, you just had to be a good salesperson to succeed in sales, and that is what he wanted to do. Chris set o...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 22
#21 – Raised in rural Kansas, Scott Mason would look up at the stars at night and dream of two things – disco and the big city! After finishing his undergraduate degree in Minneapolis, Scott was accepted into Columbia Law School and was quickly trying to find his place in New York. Upon realizing that his passion lay more in advocacy work, and not in litigation, he began working for the City of New York. During his 20-year career there he was involved in numerous projects and initiatives that he...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 21
#20 – From switching schools in undergrad to working in the Bahamas, to living in 4 states before she was 30, moving around was never something that held Sarabeth Berk back. She had never been afraid of change, from the moment she decided to shift away from her plan of working with computers in university. Instead, she went in an entirely opposite direction and studied art. Upon graduating, she loved the creativity working as an art teacher gave her and found roles that she enjoyed. At the same ...
Jan 27, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 20
#19 - Growing up near London, England, Josh De Luna decided to study law in university, but not because he wanted to become a lawyer. He was busy trying to figure out who he was and how he fit into this world – law just seemed like a fun thing to study along the way that would also appease his parents' wishes. Upon graduating, Josh left for an adventure in Brazil, volunteering for an environmental NGO, but many months later he decided to come home when the lifestyle wasn’t a good fit. Thus, bega...
Jan 20, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 19
#18 - Growing up in Nigeria, Yemi Timson aspired to achieve greatness. Despite her parent's wishes that she become a doctor, she had an interest in accounting and economics and completed a diploma at the University of Jos. While considering further education in accounting, she began to look to the career of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Managing Director of the World Bank as a template for what she should aspire to be. A promotional video with jet skis from Eastern Mediterranean University convin...
Jan 13, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 18
#17 - When leaving high school, Jonathan Miller took the route that many would say leads to success; he went to Wilfrid Laurier University, did co-op, and graduated with a business degree. His co-op secured him a good starter job in Toronto and it seemed like, at 22, he was at the beginning of a long career in marketing. But just over a year into his career, he took a trip that changed his perspective on what mattered. Upon returning, he quickly realized he wanted more of that adventure and with...
Jan 06, 2021•59 min•Ep. 17
#16 – Ania’s career path has taken her many places. When she was in high school she wanted to be a lawyer but a guidance counsellor crushed that dream. When she wanted to go to fashion school in Los Angeles, the almighty dollar crushed THAT dream. After an amazing experience at Conestoga College, she finally settled into a career in business, however, a tragic loss led her to realize there was more to life than work. She began to look for something that would give her a better work-life balance ...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 16
#15 – As a kid raised playing ball hockey on the streets of Toronto, Tyler Madarasz always knew he wanted to work in hockey. But when it came time to pick an education pathway to get him to his goal, Tyler wasn’t totally prepared. He ended up picking a program that was not what he expected and quickly realized he needed to make a change. After getting advice from a family friend, he found his way to the College of Sports Media where he immediately fell in love with the program. During his diplom...
Dec 09, 2020•50 min•Ep. 15
#14 - While cultures around the world are different, parents are all the same; they want their children to have a good life, and a stable career can help make that happen. That’s why Sen’s parents recommended that their son, a bright student, should become a doctor. The world always needs doctors, in good times and bad, so Sen took their advice and ended up as a surgeon in his native China. After a government policy change pushed him away from surgery and into the role of Quality Care Specialist...
Dec 02, 2020•58 min•Ep. 14
#13 - Will Smyth (a.k.a ImperialJedi) didn’t always know he was going to be a Youtuber/Twitch streamer, but he did have ambitions to do something grand or different. Racecar driver? Radio host? He couldn't settle on one thing, so when he had to pick a path out of high school, he decided to attend the University of Guelph. The plan was to work in either law or law enforcement, but an ‘existential crisis’ led to him abandoning that idea. While taking some time off from school, he stumbled upon a Y...
Nov 25, 2020•49 min•Ep. 13
#12 - Kait’s journey to her current career took her through a winding road in her late teens and early 20’s. She tried multiple educational paths and finally settled on fashion as her career of choice. But the path to being a Merchandising Manager was bumpy, and she turned to a more stable office administration role where she thrived. With a constant urge to better herself, and with the support of her colleagues and friends, she moved across the country, again, to begin a marketing program at Hu...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 12
#11 - Brandon was always good at chemistry and had plans to invent new materials after getting a university chemistry degree. But as university wrapped up, he realized that he did not want a future filled with lab work, so what to do? His university experience gave him the skills and the drive to work with people, so after some deep reflection, he decided a job in sales would make him happy. Utilizing the Wilfrid Laurier University Career Centre, he found a local start-up that seemed like a grea...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 11
