On International Women’s Day and throughout the month of March, we’re celebrating our amazing female employees. We were able to sit down with a few of them to hear about their careers and learn what motivates them.
What do you love about your job?
I love the opportunity to influence the culture, people and business results of the organization.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
Learning new things and in turn sharing with others through coaching and mentoring relationships.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
One interesting thing about me is that I’ve travelled to at least one country on four of the five continents
What do you love about your job?
The people at Altalink are what I love the most about my job. Having all the great people around me makes my job so much easier and enjoyable. Also, I have made many good friends over the years, whom I still keep in touch with.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
Knowing that what I do as a training coordinator impacts individuals going to a site to perform their work is what keeps me motivated. Having the right training assigned and ensuring individuals are recertifying on time is important to keeping the lights on.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
An interesting thing about me is that I once owned my own scrapbooking and ceramic studio.
What do you love about your job?
The people I work with and the culture at AltaLink.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
What motivates me is a healthy work environment and a high level of peer-to-peer learning. I will put that extra mile in for a company that supports my professional and personal growth. I get a lot of energy from my peers, and when they go out of their way to support me, I enjoy finding ways to do the same for them.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
I used to be a competitive swimmer and I love being in the water.
What do you love about your job?
The variety and nature of commercial development work is exciting right now. “Regulated business development” can sound like a bit of an oxymoron, but there is actually a lot of opportunity to explore expanding AltaLink’s business within the regulated environment. From battery storage, to purchasing customer-owned assets, to telecommunications, our team gets to help develop these options with innovative technical minds that also know our regulated business inside-out.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
Working with people that challenge me, and getting to play a key role in growing AltaLink as a business, as well as manage risk.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
I used to run a side business selling pie at the weekly Hillhurst Farmer’s Market and was also called to audition for the Great Canadian Baking Show.
What do you love about your job?
I love fixing things and making improvements. I love the certainty of a reconciliation. I love how finance isn’t just numbers in a spreadsheet. I love translating how those numbers impact the business, how it affects decision making and process improvement. I’m really lucky to work a lot with people in regulatory, projects, corporate services and customer service, and feel like I’m part of their team as well as finance.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
Continuous improvement. In the capital accounting team, there isn’t a month that goes by when we don’t think of a way to improve something, either how we do it, or adding in extra validations. It’s really satisfying to reflect on the year and see how much further forward you’ve come. It’s empowering and it also means that you can see mistakes or gaps as opportunities.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
An interesting fact about me is that I love all types of music. Especially singing, playing piano, and I used to play trombone in school.
What do you love about your job?
I love change. Being a utility system operations trainer, there is always something new to build. I like the collaboration that goes into building training that includes operators, managers and engineers.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
The people I work with and their desire to provide training on current events and outages. I’m also motivated by the discussions and learning that result from a good training session.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
I’m very proud of going back to University in my 40s and completing my Sociology degree.
What do you love about your job?
The key aspects of my job that I love are the variety and the challenge. There really is no knowing what each day is going to bring and the degree of flexible problem solving that will be needed. The opportunity to help people and contribute to strengthening our AltaLink team, processes, and culture is rewarding.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
AltaLink’s culture, the people that I work with and opportunities for continuous learning have been key to my career motivation. This has played a big role in why I am a loyal long service employee. AltaLink is a great place to work and being part of a company and team that ‘feels like home’ makes me want to do my best and do the ‘right thing’ for our team. AltaLink is known for being best in its class and our small but mighty HR team works well together to deliver on our employee commitment processes. I am proud of both AltaLink and our AltaLink HR team.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
I’ve planted over half a million trees in Alberta. I also own a heritage building in my hometown. It’s a former photography studio that my family and I have been renovating and restoring.
What do you love about your job?
There is always something new to learn! Years ago when I received my bachelor’s degree, at the graduation ceremony my professor said “Congratulations, this is the start of your learning path as an engineer!” At the time I did not fully grasp what he meant, as I thought I’ve already “graduated”. I did not realize that what we learned were the principles and the science, and there is more learning when we apply that into real day-to-day problems. Many years later, I am still learning and enjoy that every day is different with new challenges and “puzzles”. It is fun to break things into pieces, examine every piece and then put them back together with a better understanding of how it works and what the risks and areas for improvements are.
What inspires you and motivates you to do your best at work?
Understanding what the big picture is and the overall objectives that we as a team are trying to accomplish. I love getting into the details to gather an in-depth understanding of what I am working on and sometimes, even losing myself in those details. However, what motivates me (and keeps me sane) is keeping an eye on the big picture and what we want to achieve as the AltaLink team.
What interesting fact about yourself would you like to share?
As a teen, I wanted to be a freelance journalist. I hope to pick up on my journalism dreams after I retire from electrical engineering.