Choosing a Career vs A Calling
As university students, we often try to follow the career path that will let us climb the corporate ladder the quickest. We want job security, a career that pays well, and one where we can have at least some semblance of a work-life balance. In this pursuit, we often take the path that is socially acceptable, even if it isn’t necessarily where our heart lies. At WIB, we know so many individuals who will pursue honourable careers, yet never feel fulfilled or as if they’re living out their dreams. Why is this the case? How do we, as students, find a way to turn our calling into a career? For this blog, we’ve teamed up with Allyson Bonkowski, an ASoB alum, to give you some tips on how to thrive professionally while also feeling like you are serving your purpose. Allyson graduated from ASoB with a Bachelor of Commerce, Major in Marketing. She was highly involved in AISEC and went on a traineeship to Japan which she describes as “life-changing experience”, both personally and professionally (and she highly recommends this to everyone!). After graduation, she started her first small business which was an English Language program in Edmonton for visiting Japanese students. Her venture only lasted one summer because she had accepted a job with IBM, where she worked for 7 years before moving to Chicago to complete her MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. After completing her MBA, she worked as an HR Strategy Management Consultant with Towers Watson in San Francisco. During this time, she was heavily involved with building a humanitarian organization in Romania to take children from state orphanages and move them into loving family homes. Throughout all of this, she decided to move back to Edmonton, leave management consulting, get married and start a family. For the next 10 years, she focused on raising her two children with her husband, continuing her work with Romanian orphans, and using her consulting experience to assist non-profit boards in Edmonton. Eight years ago, Allyson shifted gears slightly and returned to entrepreneurship by starting her business, Global Aware Care, which she has now expanded to four early learning Centres that employ 50 Educators and care for 350 children.
Allyson has a wealth of experience and we’d love to share how she started her business and decided that social enterprise was where she belonged.
Why did you feel that management consulting was not your "calling"? What is your definition of a "calling"?
Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor at Yale School of Management, has spent her career researching how individuals identify with their work. She has established three different, defined contexts of work: job, career and calling:
Job: A job provides you with pay, benefits and perhaps some social perks. It’s primarily about earning that pay cheque. People in this category are typically more invested in their lives outside of the office. Work is merely the way they afford to do the things they love.
Career: A job you do for others, while a career is what you do for yourself. Career professionals are also working for the paycheque but they are more driven to seek out opportunities for advancement in the workplace.
Calling: Those who experience their work as a calling are most likely to feel a deep alignment between their vocation and who they are as a person. They feel a personal and emotional connection to their work.
My role as a management consultant coincided with the humanitarian work that I was doing in Romania where I was helping to place orphans into loving homes. Although I enjoyed my career as a consultant it did not motivate me like the call to care for children in need.
Had you always been interested in social enterprise and the idea of high-quality childcare, or was this something that developed over time? What made you create your business?
I have always been motivated by a calling to solve problems that make a difference in the lives of others and strengthen communities, both locally and globally. The way that I have expressed this has varied based on the needs I see and my season of life. As a management consultant who was single and had lots of air miles, making frequent trips to Romania to help orphans was a great way to invest my free time. When my kids were not yet in school, facilitating board governance workshops for women’s shelters and other Edmonton nonprofits was a great fit.
As my children became more independent and my husband and I rebalanced our home and child-rearing responsibilities, I had the time and creative energy to start Global Aware Care. I started Global Aware Care for four reasons. First, my experience with orphans taught me how critical the early years are for children. Second, I knew that providing quality care would give working parents (especially Moms) peace of mind during the very busy season of raising young children. Third, I wanted to create a better working environment for early childhood Educators who are typically underpaid and under-valued. Finally, I saw an opportunity to utilize existing community assets in a new and exciting way. There are several large churches in Edmonton with multiple classrooms, huge gyms and amazing outdoor spaces that sit vacant for most of the week. Having a Global Aware Care centre in their space enables a church to give back to the community and provides children with access to large indoor and outdoor spaces that significantly enhance their growth and development. It’s a win for everyone!
Do you think someone's "calling" is natural or does it tend to be something that is learned through trial and error?
Per Dr. Wrzesniewski’s research, I think it’s important for women to think deeply about how they identify with their work, recognizing that in various seasons of our life, our work context can vary from being a job, career or a calling.
4. How can students turn their calling into a career? Oftentimes, we sacrifice our true interests for the sake of a reputable job. How can we avoid doing this?
I think that a good starting point is to think about your interests and skills and what problem(s) you can solve at the intersection of these two. Whether you are a recent grad or midway through your career, it’s important to continually sharpen your skills to maintain your relevance and an area of expertise.
Second, ask yourself how that “reputable job” is going to better equip you to tackle problems that you’re excited to solve. You may find that you enjoy the camaraderie and intellectual stimulation from working with an established company, not to mention the steady pay cheque and health benefits. Having this job security may enable you to both utilize your skills and pursue your outside interests without the associated financial stress. In addition, building a network within the company and broader business community may lead to opportunities to utilize your skills in an area of interest.
For me, the career that I started at an HR Strategy management consulting firm challenged me to think through the culture, rewards and ways that I wanted to show my employees how valued and appreciated they are at Global Aware Care. In this way, my career informed my calling. The steady income also financed my frequent trips to Romania to pursue my passion of helping orphans. At times, it is our job at reputable companies that enable us to pursue our passions, so we need to keep our skills sharp to add value to our employer.
At the same time, as I reflect on my career choices, I wonder how my work life would have been different if I had pursued my calling in social entrepreneurship immediately after graduation. While I learned a lot in both my corporate and consulting jobs, being a small business owner and entrepreneur has required me to apply a broader variety of business skills and challenged me to grow more both professionally and personally. I really like what James Clear, author of Atomic Habits wrote: "Entrepreneurship is a personal growth engine disguised as a business pursuit."
5. During COVID-19, what are some ways that students can truly explore what's out there?
Read, research possibilities (see suggestions in Question 7), plan, keep learning and growing. Atomic Habits is a great read!
6. If there is one piece of advice that you could give yourself when you were graduating university, what would it be?
I think my best advice would be to think about what your work context is – job, career or calling, recognizing that it may vary based on other aspects of your life. If you want to take a run at being paid to pursue your interests and/or calling, start to look for opportunities to be an entrepreneur in life as soon as you are able. At a minimum, it gives you a chance to determine whether your true interests can support you financially or whether those interests are better enjoyed as hobbies or voluntary ways to give back to the community.
Entrepreneurship is an excellent self-made internship that challenges you to take risks, solve problems and apply everything you are learning in the BCom program - sometimes within the span of a few hours!
Even if you fail, you won’t regret that you tried and you may well decide to take another shot at it in a different capacity or in a different season of life. If you don’t think your idea is market worthy quite yet, start by getting around other entrepreneurs and learning what they have done to pursue their ideas through organizations such as Venture for Canada, Startup Edmonton and/or Alberta Women Entrepreneurs.
Whether you succeed or fail, what you learn will make you even more attractive to a “reputable company” because you’ll bring to the table a skill set and entrepreneurial mindset that is always in demand no matter what the size of organization. As Peter F. Drucker writes in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles, “the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” Entrepreneurship is a key ingredient to innovation and there is not an organization in the world that can thrive without innovation!
We hope that you have learned just as much from Allyson as we have! As you go through your education and decide what path you want to take after graduation, remind yourself that it’s okay to go into something and decide that it isn’t for you. Just because you pursued an Accounting major does not mean that you have to stay in the field for the rest of your life (all the power to you if you do though!). Every experience you have is a learning opportunity and will only push you towards where you really belong - your calling.
