When I was a kid, I wanted to be an architect. My creative impulses were drawn to the ruled lines and attention to detail required at the drafting table. In my teen years, I picked up Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and I was mesmerized. Architecture had captured my imagination early on, but my future would be in business.

On the way to that future, I went to Israel for a year of university. Returning to the University of Western Ontario in London, I switched direction – veering away from business and toward philosophy. I began flirting with metaphysics and higher spirituality. For a while, I seriously considered becoming a rabbi. But by the end of my formal academic education, I was left with a powerful desire to leave the ivory tower and do something practical and earthbound.

So I went to work with Greenpeace. Over the next seven years, I mastered guerrilla marketing and the politics of NGOs while working on a variety of international campaigns to rid the world of some rather nasty toxic substances and prevent the ecological deterioration we are seeing today.

By the early 1990s, the internet had arrived and was showing early signs of being a game-changer. So I left eco-politics to start a web development and new media firm. NetEffect Communications focused largely on helping NGOs and small businesses establish and maintain their web presence – everything from branding, to marketing and web content management.

Eventually, the internet firm was acquired and I joined the acquiring business in the role of VP Operations. Givex was a Toronto-based technology services company in the stored value and loyalty transaction processing space. Over the next five years, we grew the company significantly by securing deals with large retail clients such as The Cara Group, McDonald’s Canada, Regis Corporation, Chapters-Indigo, LCBO and others.

By 2006, I had left the crazy 24/7 world of retail point-of-sale transaction processing and moved into producing online learning systems and content for leading insurance companies, including Manulife, Sun Life, RBC Insurance and Standard Life. Oh, and along the way, I became a life-licensed insurance professional.

Now, I am consulting on web development projects and online communications strategies, developing my own web content projects, as well as co-parenting and homemaking for three lovely children.