Skills Work!® for Women – Devon MacKinnon, Special Event Coordinator

Having a baby at a young age is guaranteed to be a challenging experience.  For Devon MacKinnon, the added challenge was her lack of training beyond high school.  She loved her job at the pharmacy where she worked, but she recognized how limited her options were – the most significant being that she faced seven years of university education if she wanted to become a pharmacist.  Being very young, with a child to support, Devon had to weigh her career options carefully, and look toward a long-term career solution.  She quit her job at the pharmacy and turned to a career area she was interested in: event coordination.

In her current role is as Project Coordinator for the Northwest Training and Adjustment Board, Devon works in partnership with area high schools to help increase co-op opportunities for students, and also promotes the Ministry of Education’s Specialist High Skills Major program.  Her job is multi-faceted, involving advertising and marketing, travelling, networking at career fairs and trade shows, and even some graphic and web design.  She cites the most important skills for her job as organizational ability, good people skills, great budgeting skills and “big picture” thinking combined with attention to detail.

Outside of her regular job, Devon has also been contracted to coordinate events for other organizations, which has come with a veritable laundry list of benefits.  “Work isn’t boring when you have different projects all the time, I meet so many new people, and I get to be creative through designing posters and websites.”  The additional income and the opportunity to work from home on these additional projects allow Devon to achieve a great work-life balance.  She has recently been profiled as a success story both by the Ministry of Mining and Northern Development’s Youth Connect North, and by OpportunityDryden.ca.

What would Devon like to be doing in five years?  “I would eventually like to own my own business or continuing consulting.  I’m still of that age where I am eligible for government grants for young entrepreneurs.  I really do believe in the abilities of youth and would like to work with them directly someday.”

Devon is a returning mentor, and will be attending the Kenora Networking Dinner on November 2, 2010.