Who am I?

Just a warning, this is the longest post I have ever done but it does sum up who I am at this point.

Who am I? A rather existential question I know, but one that I am fine tuning. As I see myself through others' lens, it has become clearer to me as to what my true basic strengths are. 

Am I a creative graphic designer? Absolutely. I have created many print and web assets for myself and my clients over 25 years.

Am I an instructor? Yes, and one who is deeply interested in my client's success.

Creative? I took Creative Problem Solving courses in Design School and eventually taught a Creative Thinking course at Fanshawe College for 2 years. Lateral thinking is how I automatically think. 

A collaborator? I am happiest when I am working with a cohesive and collaborative group. Am I am mentor? Well that comes with being an instructor. Again, I really care that a person gets what I am trying to teach them.  

Great sales person? Yes, I had success early in my life with cold calling businesses and achieved top sales for a campaign for Canada Trust. 

English geek? I graduated with 2 grade 13 english courses. As my children were growing up, they called me the Grammar Queen. I never let them get away with anything in that matter. 

Experience being on the bleeding edge? With my work on the original EasyWeb design for Canada Trust and also for creating icons for CTConnect, it was all a wild west mentality in the advent of the web. I feel very blessed that I had these opportunities. 

In 1994 I was in San Francisco with my husband because Canada Trust won an award for the first web banking website in Canada. While he was at the conference, I had a rental car and ended up driving down the El Camino Real asI headed to San Jose. I met with a manager at Adobe and was shown around. I drove by Apple (lots of basketball courts out back), saw Netscape Headquarters, and generally enjoyed being in silicon valley. 

In the early years of our family, my husband was travelling across North America for his work, I did a lot of the daily routines myself. As our children grew up, they were both in various extracurricular activities, I was on a non profit board, I also continued doing graphic and web design work and volunteered extensively. In other words, I like being busy. I volunteered at my children's school for many years as well and created graduation videos for their respective classes. 

I was on a non profit board for over 11 years which included being on the executive team. Here I lent my hand at creating graphics and web content for them. I learned a lot about consensus building while I was here. I learned a lot about dealing with others who had different ideas as I had. Overall, I am very thankful for those experiences. They taught me to really listen to others and keep the dialogue open always because eventually, nuggets of truth come out and issues can be resolved. 

My husband and I were general contractors on designing and building our dream home. We dealt with many trades at the same time and with crazy timelines. I sourced out most of the items needed. Spending many months researching, pricing, validating, verifying , and communicating with potential trades and resources, 

With our house building project, I learned that I enjoyed making sure every stone was turned, every option exhausted, Doing my due diligence is something that I enjoyed. If there is a possibility of something being done, I will find out how to make it happen, and I have on many occasions.

I am at a very exciting time in my life where my children are grown up and I can focus again on what interests me. I look forward to new opportunities that utilize my skill set.

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