Our guest this week, Angeza Mohammed, is a testament to the power of aligning one's passions with their profession. Follow her strategic yet dynamic career path and learn how mentally and physically envisioning her ideal life, strategic networking, and taking risks led to her creating The Consulting Nest and How did you learn to do that?, The Successful Candidate.
You’ll Learn
Today’s Guest
Angeza Mohammed is the CEO and Founder of How did you learn to do that?, The Successful Candidate and The Consulting Nest Inc.
With over 10 years of professional experience, Angeza brings a unique and strategic approach to creating the career you want, feeling fulfilled and knowing how to take the next step in your growth!
Angeza’s career has taken her through and into all aspects of the health care system in British Columbia, Canada and it all began before she even graduated from her undergrad, all thanks to her unique strategy which has been instrumental to her success!
Angeza’s purpose in life is to share and inspire you to create the life that you wish existed for yourself. In addition to her successful healthcare career, Angeza coaches recent graduates and professionals to help them discover what fulfills them, how to align that with their career and how to take action every single day towards creating the life they always wish existed for themselves!
Angeza’s biggest piece of advice to you is to always remember that investing in yourself has the ability to catalyze your life from ordinary to extraordinary.
Resources
Join The Public Health Career Club: the #1 hangout spot and community dedicated to building and growing your dream public health career.
Our guest this week, Angeza Mohammed, is a testament to the power of aligning one's passions with their profession. Follow her strategic yet dynamic career path and learn how mentally and physically envisioning her ideal life, strategic networking, and taking risks led to her creating The Consulting Nest and How did you learn to do that?, The Successful Candidate.
You’ll Learn
Today’s Guest
Angeza Mohammed is the CEO and Founder of How did you learn to do that?, The Successful Candidate and The Consulting Nest Inc.
With over 10 years of professional experience, Angeza brings a unique and strategic approach to creating the career you want, feeling fulfilled and knowing how to take the next step in your growth!
Angeza’s career has taken her through and into all aspects of the health care system in British Columbia, Canada and it all began before she even graduated from her undergrad, all thanks to her unique strategy which has been instrumental to her success!
Angeza’s purpose in life is to share and inspire you to create the life that you wish existed for yourself. In addition to her successful healthcare career, Angeza coaches recent graduates and professionals to help them discover what fulfills them, how to align that with their career and how to take action every single day towards creating the life they always wish existed for themselves!
Angeza’s biggest piece of advice to you is to always remember that investing in yourself has the ability to catalyze your life from ordinary to extraordinary.
Resources
Join The Public Health Career Club: the #1 hangout spot and community dedicated to building and growing your dream public health career.
There's no other person that has the same sequence of events that have created who you are and how you look at the world. So just knowing that and knowing that because of that, you have something to offer to the world, and it could be something that you're doing right now, it could be something that you don't know you're going to be doing very soon, but tapping into that potential and just always taking the risk, because it's always more reward when you take the risk right.
Speaker 2:Welcome to PH Spotlight, a community for you to build your public health career with. Join us weekly right here, and I'll be here too. Your host, sujani Siva from PH Spot. Hey, anjesa, and welcome to the PH Spot podcast. Long Overdue to have you here and we went like 40 minutes of just chit chatting before we realized that we should start recording this podcast episode, so welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I think I tell people whenever I have a guest like where we've met and like, I think recently, in the past year or two, everyone I've met has been on LinkedIn. I think it's been such a great place to just meet people, get to know them, collaborate on different projects. So Anjesa and I met on LinkedIn. We connected, I think more than a year ago or so, and have been able to keep in touch and see each other not only grow in our work but also grow in our families, which is being super fun. One of the favorite questions I have whenever I bring on guests who have a public health background is kind of how they discovered public health and, like, what's their earliest memory of just finding out what this field is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. I think that that's sort of always a journey for people to get into public health. But I definitely, when I started university I was after high school took a year because I wasn't sure where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. My first semester I dabbled in. You know, should I do business or should I do med school? Med school always, I think I had talked about. I had always wanted to be a pediatrician.
Speaker 1:That was what sort of my I told my family and when I started to dabble into it, I realized that, like you know, I really, really loved the sciences and I really loved, specifically, biology labs. I was like this is awesome, I love seeing what I'm learning in practice. And so when I was looking at my university programs, I found one that said Bachelor of Science and Health Sciences and I didn't quite understand what that meant, but I was like, oh, it sounds like, sounds cool. So I enrolled in that program and I and I started doing that program and it was. It was public health, but it was called health sciences and I didn't know public health as around at that time. But once I started getting into the work and I was, you know, learning about it. I was doing that program because it met all the prerequisites for med school. Okay, you just have like 12 courses before I go to med school, and that was the program that already made you do those 12 courses, so it wasn't anything. In addition, and it was in third year, I sat down in a course called social determinants of health. I didn't know what it meant. It was so new, such a new concept to me and at the same time I was starting to question medical school.
Speaker 1:I was a part of a medical fraternity, a pre-med fraternity, so there was basically everyone at the school, at the university, that wanted to go to med school and we were doing info sessions with physicians and other people and making those decisions. And I met a woman who was a radiologist and her and I started chatting on the side at one of these events and she asked me a question. She said do you want to have a family? I said yes, I like I want five kids. That was the goal and I have two now and I think I'm done. I can aspire to five, but I think I'm done at two. But she said she asked me that question and I kind of was like okay, like I said yes, and she said then you need to really think about what life you want and what kind of life you want and how you want your life to look.
Speaker 1:And she said I love being a radiologist. She said it's the most rewarding thing that I've ever done and it's my dream. It's been my dream. And she said but when I had my two kids, she said I couldn't be with my kids at the same time of being a resident, a radiology resident, and I had to be at the back and call of the hospital and you know, just putting in those hours, getting those experiences, because it's very hands on and the learning is when you're present. She said so I had my kids with my in-laws majority of the time.
Speaker 1:And she said she goes. At this time she goes. I'm about 15 years into my career, I have a stable career, I have stable hours, she goes, everything sort of settled down. And so she said now I'm at the place where I can be with my kids and do my job and she goes. But when I go to hang out with my kids, they say to me oh, you know, actually we'd rather go to grandma's house, you know. And she said I realize I don't feel that bond, I don't feel like I'm going to be able to do that. And so she just shared that with me. Because she said just really dig deep and think about your future and what you want your future to look like, and it's definitely doable. She goes. I know a lot of people that have had kids, had been a doctor and it's been fine. She goes. But in my experience, this is what I struggle with.
Speaker 1:That was the same day that I started this new course and I sat down and I was like so fascinated I was so fascinated that our health, our education, where we came from, where we live, our social safety, now the country, what the country has, all these things impact our health so deeply. And it was in that course that you know within that week that I was like this is what I love to do, like this part of it. This is what I want to do is impact health in a broader way. And then that was when I decided like okay, whatever this career is in social determinants of health, this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:If that means I'm going to go to med school and be a public health physician, I'll do that. If that means I'm just going to be a public health practitioner and not go to med school, I'll do that. But whatever the path is, I'll just sort of follow it intuitively. And so that's really how I found public health is. Just through that course and that conversation, there's a different way. We could enter health care and health without being a physician and going to med school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when we learn about the social determinants of health and I found, at least you know, years back and I think you and I probably went and got our undergrad around the same time there weren't a lot of bachelor's level education in public health, and so I remember too kind of epi and some of those courses were available for third and fourth year, and you almost wonder like, oh, I wish I had this opportunity to learn about social determinants of health earlier on, and sometimes, you know, I even think it should be like part of the high school curriculum because it's so foundational to just all of the sciences that I hope we get to a point where, you know, I'm seeing more and more bachelors level public health programs, which is amazing.
Speaker 2:But I hope it gets kind of integrated into even our high school curriculum because it's just so foundational to everything we do. Right, when you were explaining, you know where you're born, where you live, the like, access of all the things that is needed for you to live your life is just so foundational to everything we do that it wouldn't hurt to know all of that early on and then, let alone have people you know choose a career in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I was the third cohort of students going through that bachelor's program. It was so very new and funny story is that I didn't know. I didn't know who designed the program, but it was this person named Dr Michael Hayes, and when I went to go do my master's of public health, I went to a different university in BC and he had designed the master's of public health and so I repeated my master's degree, but in a very condensed two years, I mean, I did phenomenal, I just went copy paste, you know.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it was such a new, new space at that time and this is only like a decade ago. It's not like that long ago. That, like the same person designed both programs in one province. At that time I was like, wow, this is so wild.
Speaker 2:Such a small world in public health. I think that's what you realize, especially you know in Canada. We're both in Canada and I think a lot of the players in public health you'll eventually like bump into them at some point of your career.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then I saw that you started a master's program in public health, kind of almost immediately after you graduated with your undergraduates, so it sounds like you chose to go, you know, down that path rather than medical school. What was the reason for that decision for you?
Speaker 1:I think it was a conversation I had with that physician and just like that, in claim of that, I really wanted to be a mom and I wanted to be a very present mom. So my family were refugees from Afghanistan and so I was born in Afghanistan and it was about a year when my family had to flood like overnight, like I didn't think we had like a crazy story. But then I interviewed my grandparents for one of my undergrad projects in public health it was around what they think of healthcare in Canada as immigrants and they told me the whole story and it was a crazy story of how they just had to pack up overnight, you know, pay people to cross them over to the border into Pakistan, and then a year later we had an uncle.
Speaker 1:My grandma had a brother in Canada, in a small town called Chatham in Ontario and he sponsored all of our families and we were like, wow, people, wow, he sponsored all of us and we lived in Chatham for three years or four years before my grandparents were like this is too cold. We moved to Vancouver. But yeah, it was one of those crazy stories. And so growing up I remember my parents valued work Like I've talked about this before on my LinkedIn, but my parents work was like if they were working, that's the way to go.
Speaker 1:And even to this day, my dad's like if you take a year off of work, you're so behind work like you're so behind in the Canadian culture and to me I always, growing up, was like why are my parents at these performances? Why are my parents chaperoning field trips? Why are my parents dropping me off and picking me up? At one point I remember my mom arranged for a taxi company to pick us up by sister and I at elementary school to drive us to our grandparents' house because she was working and my dad was working. So I remember from a young age just feeling like when I become a mom I'm going to be there for all these moments because my parents are lovely and I love them, but like they valued work over, you know, being present and they still do that to this day, and that's.
Speaker 1:I feel, like part of the immigrant journey and the story, and so for me that conversation really dug deep. For me because I'm okay.
Speaker 1:Like if I go mad school, like I'm fully in and I'm fully committing and I have my personality. Type is that when I commit to something, I don't just like half commit, I have to go all in and I want to be president, do it all. So just knowing that, knowing that that was not going to be for me, that's why I decided, like just to go straight into the master's program right away. Like I think I took a summer semester and we had a two week semester break. Yeah, at the end of that two weeks I was starting the master's program. Like I did not take a break at all, I just wanted to like do it and get it over with and just start a career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. And then what happened after graduation? Were you able to figure out, like, where you wanted to start your public health career, like, did those ideas start to come together for you, or did you already have that kind of mapped out before starting the MPH program, or was that something that kind of developed throughout?
Speaker 1:Well, I was really lucky in the sense that when I finished the last semester of my undergrad, I started already applying for jobs and putting feelers out and I was realizing that the market was really tough. At that time. There was not a lot of public health jobs.
Speaker 1:And the public health team was like six people for a whole provincial health authority, and so I started just thinking, like you know, what could I do? And I got a job with kids' health phone and I was working with them and it was around children's mental health which was an area I was really passionate about.
Speaker 1:And at that same time I thought to myself you know what if I just go in as like an administrative staff and then see if I could change course afterwards? So I started doing some research online and I found someone that was kind of built a temporary pool of people to do various jobs across the authority. So I connected with her and I went from like a full-time, secure, stable job to like she gave me a one-week assignment, like she's actually extended to three weeks by the end of like the offer. But she's like, yeah, come work for three weeks. And I said, well, what if I don't have work after three weeks? She's like you're just gonna have to jump in with two feet and figure it out. And I was like, oh my gosh, like that's so scary to me, right and so right as I'm finishing my degree, I jumped ship and I went to take this three week assignment and I was lucky enough that in that three week assignment, you know, I met so many people and I connected with so many people and I really put out feelers and I got people to take me as person named Andrew, who was my director.
Speaker 1:He's still like I'm still talking with him. He was such an amazing soul. He and I connected. He's like yeah, why don't you come and be my assistant for a month? And I said, okay. So he went in and I was his assistant for a month and he was the director of population of public health and he said I have a little bit of funding, I'm going to create a job for you and I want you to stay working with me. So he created a project coordinator position and I got to work with him and I got to do that while I was doing my master's degree and he said to me I'm going to support you doing your master's degree, do your courses during work hours I'm okay with that Do your practicum project here, do your thesis project here and create initiatives that we could work with. So it was really like I feel like he was like my guardian angel, because he really helped me out. So I was lucky enough that I got to do my master's degree while working full time.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. What was the role that you were doing at Kids Help Online? Because you said that was a permanent job.
Speaker 1:I was a coordinator so I was working with them for all their initiatives, so getting community involvement, working with the schools. There was a couple fundraising initiatives they had that I worked with them. Fund development really just getting the word out about, because Kids Help Online is based out in Toronto. Now they're huge right, but when.
Speaker 1:I started a decade ago, they were very heavily in Toronto and Ontario and in the West they weren't as well known, and so they were just sort of starting to establish that knowledge base. Now they're just such a great organization and I such an affinity to them and the work that they're doing, what they're doing for kids, is just so special.
Speaker 2:That story is incredible, you know, for you, for taking that leap and really trusting your instinct, all on the motivation of really joining that Organization that you wanted to be a part of, right, I'm sure a lot of people kind of go through that Mental block of like, should I let go of this like stable income, to try something out for three weeks, or one week when you started, and then potentially going to three weeks and then, yeah, and seeing where that goes, what do you, what do you think helped you with that?
Speaker 1:I think it was just having very clear direction, like I had a very Direction of what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go. I knew the masters program was pending, like I knew was starting soon. I knew I had to do a thesis and I had to do a practicum project, which meant like I would already have to leave this job and I didn't know if I had the support to leave the job for three months to Do my work for my master's degree.
Speaker 1:So, honestly, it was just like something I just did on the whim, because I was. I'm just gonna do this and see what happened, you know, and yeah, and it was definitely a huge risk for me, but it really worked out. I'm so grateful for it.
Speaker 2:Awesome. A few episodes ago I was talking to Tasha and we were talking about taking bold steps in your career and then she told me about dropping into like community health fairs just to see if she could meet Individuals who actually worked in the like the department. Right, the health fairs weren't meant to be career fairs, they were meant for the community because they were doing all these programming. But she just like showed up and then was bold to ask them for an email or a phone number and then I think she said for three or six months just emailed the the person in order to like then eventually land a Career or a job with them and then eventually built up her like almost a decade career there. So you know, this also reminds me of that conversation where you sometimes can benefit when you take those bold steps, and then I think it's probably you then like being really active in that three week opportunity to see, like what else you could find for yourself there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's amazing. Yeah, and sometimes you have to do those creative things, you have to do those creative approaches and yeah, and really just putting yourself out there and that sort of reminds me of like, like, how I got into consulting is still through that project coordinator job. One of my tasks was we had, like I said, six as team of six. We had six project managers and they were hiring consultants all the time, and so one of my jobs was to work with the project manager and the consultant, get all the onboarding documents, get all the procurement documents in place and submit it for a PO, so hire the consultants.
Speaker 1:And it was through that that I started to look at, like, what people did, what they were consulting and how they actually delivered their work. So it's so heavily and so closely with them and the impact that consultants were making on projects or an organization. And it was from like that inside that I was like, oh, this is such an interesting career. And in my conversations with consultants I would ask those questions like I know I'm hiring you, could you tell me a little bit about how'd you get into consulting? What do you do? Why did you decide to do this? Why not doing something else and and just learning more about them and their journey and really what got them into consulting, and that's really the how the seeds got planted For me to join and become a consultant as well.
Speaker 2:I think every Story you're sharing here with me, like each phase of your life, it sounds like you're somebody who's like always forward, thinking about like where you want to take your career and the the steps that you're taking Presently is in alignment with that, and I don't know if you, if you've done that intentionally all your life, and it sounds like you have, because I think you you mentioned that a little bit, but yeah, it's a really smart way of doing things and I I sometimes talk about like strategic networking and essentially like what you are doing is okay. I know I would enjoy consulting at some point in my life, so let me start talking to the consultant so they could give me that guidance, right? So, yeah, I don't know if you have anything more to add to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's. I appreciate you saying that because I don't know it's. It's a weird story I share, so some people don't believe it. It's because it's unbelievable. But I have a mentor and a couple years ago he asked me this question like what's the vision, like, picture your life?
Speaker 2:when you.
Speaker 1:Accomplish what you want. And for some reason there's this been this image in my head since I was really young and it was me in a garden of like a big backyard and there's a table and two chairs and I sit there and I have my coffee every morning and then I'm looking out and I see my house and I see my kids running around and I see this garden and sometimes we like plant in the garden, but this is just like this image I had and I invite people to come have coffee with me. I do meetings there, interviews, whatever it is, but like I just I'm always at this table, this chair, underneath the willow tree in this garden. And shortly after I shared that vision with him, I went on Facebook and you know how they say they listen to you.
Speaker 1:So that exact image showed up from this artist who does puzzles and she takes these pictures and she creates these puzzles and I literally looked at that and I was like, oh my gosh, am I dreaming right now or is this for real? Of course I bought the puzzle I cannot do puzzles for life for me but I finished that one within a day and I framed it and it sits in my office and I look at it every day because that's the image that I have had, that's sort of my North Star. When you say I make decisions, it's really to create that life for myself where I could do that and for me.
Speaker 1:I remember finishing university, finishing a master's degree and being like oh no, I have to get up at 8am every day, or 7am, and go to work. I have to do that over and over and over, and I'm not one that likes repetitive work. I like risk, I like things that change all the time. So that's been something that I always knew I didn't want to do, that. I don't want to do the 9 to 5 every day.
Speaker 1:I wanted flexibility to just do crazy things and take my family and go live somewhere else for a year, if I wanted to Just more flexibility in my time has really been my compass in life and just this image. So, yeah, everything that I do do, everything that I do build even though it's taking away from that image and maybe taking more time than it should from my family it's all for that goal of building that image.
Speaker 2:I really like that and I don't know how long it took for you to dream up that image in your head.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have a version of an image in my head, but it still hasn't become as clear as you are explaining yours, and I think for any of our listeners who are like, oh man, where's my image? I think it can take a little bit of time, right, but you have to keep asking yourself what is it that I want for myself, what is the career I'm trying to build for myself? And I like to think about it as like what is that like dream public health career? And I like to think about it as separate from just a job that you're looking for, right, a dream job versus a dream life and career, which I think are connected, regardless of what we say. They're so intertwined and especially in public health, I think we get into it because there's this like passion to serve the communities that we are part of, and creating that image for yourself, or the life that you want to build, can take some time, but you have to keep thinking about it and then eventually you think it'll come to be like the image that you're explaining here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah. You just need to keep digging deeper, you need to get better here.
Speaker 1:There's definitely moments in time where I'm like there's things that creep in and I'm like, oh, that would be a cool career, that would be cool. I'm like going up the corporate ladder, that's really cool. And I actually had this conversation with my husband recently. With my day job, I work in overdose. I lead some of the initiatives around overdose, the overdose crisis and responding to it, and there was recently in BC there was an article that came out around safer, prescribed alternatives and I was a part of the team that created that pilot project just before I went on that leave and I said to my husband I was like this is like the part that's so cool that feeds into the ego of like I was a part of that team.
Speaker 1:Look at it, look at it, it's on the news, that's so cool, like Bonnie Henry's talking about it and I said but when you branch off into consulting, you don't necessarily get that. Or you branch off into entrepreneurship, you don't necessarily get that. You lose a sense of identity and you lose a sense of like who am I?
Speaker 1:you know, like who am I? I'm not. I don't know if it's title, I don't have this, I don't know if that and I, when I said to him, I was like that sometimes is like a fear that holds me back in maintaining my job and not quitting, of course, other than finances, because I started to keep my job, but. But there's those sort of things that creep in and cloud image for you. But it just takes a lot of self-reflecting and a lot of like digging deep. And that's why I bought the puzzle in this image, cause I was like if it's right in front of me, like I'll always see it and I'll always remember it and it's not going to get clouded as as if it's just in my head.
Speaker 1:So, if you have an image, I would recommend just drawing it out even if it doesn't look pretty, writing it down. But there's moments in time where, like, we get the image, it like seems clear and then it goes back to being blurry. It's like if focus is in and then you lose focus, right. So yeah, that's what I would recommend for people, because yeah, it's those images that will really drive you forward in your questions and also I feel really fortunate that I've had certain people come into my life, that I've come across, that have said certain things that have always stuck with me that have been very clear, and one story that I'll share is that is one of the risks I took actually after that project coordinator job was I jumped into risk management and I do not know risk management.
Speaker 1:I don't know nothing about risk management, but I took on this new role and I spent three months and, just like learned as much as I could about it and it was around healthcare and I realized it's not too far off public health, because it's all about prevention and promoting from a risk perspective for the health authority.
Speaker 1:But in that I met someone that was the CEO of our cancer agency at one point and he was a vice president too and he had just trained someone. And he said he's like, this person that I just trained has the same job title as me and he goes the writing is on the wall that I'm being let go. It's just nobody's told me yet. But he had been there for over 27 years and he was a physician. He took all the administrative roles.
Speaker 1:Anytime they needed someone to jump into a role as an interim, he did it. He had dedicated his life to the organization and that sort of was his like wake up call of like I spent all these years, sacrificed everything to be here For this place and this is how I'm being thanked at the end. And he looked at me and he goes one of the biggest risks in life is taking the risk of not being true to yourself or not doing what you want because you want to please a company or an organization like an entity. And he said that was like a risk he took and something that he at that point he was saying he regretted because there were some things along the way that he wanted to do but he never jumped in because he was too scared and he also didn't want to let down the company.
Speaker 1:So that's something that always sticks with me, because I'm, like I always worry about losing what I want. You know, being almost like a people pleaser, like making sure that I do things for the betterment of the company, versus I'm doing something that I want to do, and so him sharing that with me was, you know, another thing that like really changed my perspective of what is it that I want to do. Do I want to have loyalty? Do I want to, like sacrifice my personal time, my family time, for a company or for an organization that? You know? I always say this to people. But you know, if you were, you know, god forbid, if you were to die tomorrow, your job is posted and a new person is going to take your job, but your family is going to miss you, your friends are going to miss you, your dreams are going to be left unfulfilled, you know and so it's scary.
Speaker 1:And it's scary taking risks, especially in my entrepreneur world, like building my consulting business or building the successful candidate and the consulting nest. It's scary because I sometimes think like I'll just you know, I just posted this on my LinkedIn yesterday but like there's so many times that I'm like this is too hard, like to build something, I'm just going to fold it, I'm going to quit, I'm just going to maintain my job. And like I go to work, I come home, it's all good.
Speaker 1:Yeah realize that. You know I don't want to just do that. I want to control my hours, I want to control what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, how I'm doing it. I want to have untapped potential in me personally, but in my salary and how I build my skills, all that stuff, and that's why I'm doing it. It's tough, it's hard, but you know you have to take these risks sometimes because it is worth it in the end and, honestly, nothing that's worth it is ever easy Like that's such a cliche thing to say but it's very true Nothing worth while is easy.
Speaker 2:Would you say that was the conversation that kind of got you kick started into jumping into consulting, like I know you. You started dabbling into it and kind of taking on some of your own projects at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I think it was what I was looking for and what we're taught to look for is a full-time job, right. And I knew I was like, okay, I want to be a project manager. But these six friends of mine who were like we're, we got really really close to that team and I still talk to them and it was like they were amazing people. They were never going to leave their jobs, you know, because there wasn't another job to go to right, and now it's probably called expanded, so there's lots of jobs, but at that time they basically didn't have another role to go to right. There was one director role, six project managers, so the natural progression was the director leaves or goes up and then they go into one person goes into that role. But that wasn't going to happen and I and so I did get into consulting because I just looked at like if I'm not going to work in public health, I can't find a job in public health and this is another way that I could do public health work at that time.
Speaker 1:And when I jumped into risk management, it was really because I couldn't find anything else in public health and we had a new director at that time and she came from risk management.
Speaker 1:She said to me she goes, it's not that different, and she goes. You will have such an impact in making a change from a risk perspective because the initiative that I worked on was brand new and it was called integrated risk management or enterprise risk management, but it was building a reporting system for the entire health authority where we looked at risk from a proactive perspective. But what do you envision happening and how can we minimize that impact and minimize the consequences if it did happen? It was amazing, but I really, at the end of that, I missed, you know, public health and I missed being in public health. And that's when I jumped ship to another health authority and I did take a pay cut and a title cut, like I went from a manager and I was meeting with CEOs and executives to a policy analyst role in another health authority, but it was a policy analyst in the health equity team.
Speaker 1:I was coming back sort of like home to what I really wanted to do and then moved into overdose after that, but it was. It's just always just taking risks, just doing, doing the thing to do to get to where you want, and not feeling like you're stuck on one path, like you're always competitive. You can always change, you can always. Nothing is ever forever.
Speaker 1:So like if you move through another role and you don't like it. You can always go to a different one, you can come back to a different, you know role on doing the stuff you were doing previously, but I think that's a piece that people in their careers always worry about is things that things are permanent, and I personally feel like nothing is ever permanent.
Speaker 2:I heard that advice early on. It's like a lot of the steps or actions you take are often reversible, so don't don't like get stuck in. Like am I making the perfect choice right now in my career, Right so?
Speaker 2:I've always kind of like held on to that. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what you're trying to do with consulting Nest, and then we'll also kind of link up all the the, the websites that people can check out more information, including your LinkedIn page, so that they can follow along on your journey as well. So, yeah, I think, like talking about that North Star, the vision that you have for consulting Nest, I think it's a good place to start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. And so when I started consulting and doing this work I'm in addition to working full time I had a lot of people, like colleagues, saying to me like, hey, could you tell me how you do it? Tell me, what are you consulting? How'd you get into it? You helped me with these proposals or can you help me establish myself? And I just naturally started doing that, mentoring and coaching people that I knew, and it was in 2016, when I had this, or 2017, actually, when I had this idea. I was, like my sister's, an accountant, so she was telling me she could get little side projects on Upcork or Fiverr a couple other business related websites and I thought to myself.
Speaker 1:I was like there's nothing for public health professionals, people that are working government and healthcare and nonprofits to share that knowledge. And we and people that work in those industries. They're so knowledgeable, they have so much to offer. You know, it'd be cool if there was a website or a platform where people could post what they offer. Like I'm a consultant, I, this is what I consult in, here's what I can offer.
Speaker 1:You and organizations can go on this platform and see all these people and be able to connect with them and get to know them that they wouldn't normally connect with or get to know, but also for consultants, that they could find contracts or find opportunities and be able to apply just like a job for consulting opportunities more effectively and quickly, as opposed to this networking and a bit of an elitism around consulting where only the people that you know get projects or when you're circled get projects.
Speaker 1:And so that's what I set out to build in 2020. So I had my daughter, so I put that project on hold for a little while, but in 2020, I was like I'm going to do this, I'm going to build this project. So I built the marketplace, I built a beta version of it and I brought on consultants and I worked with the consultants, coached them and mentioned them, and we were able to get people matched up in projects and consulting. So that's what I'm continuing to do with. The consulting nest is I want to create a place where professionals can learn to become consultants. They can learn the ins and outs of the business. They can learn how to do consulting projects.
Speaker 1:They can learn a lot around alignment and resiliency and their mindset around consulting and that they can have a place where they're supported, where they could post like here's what I offer, here's what I can do for you, and that organizations that are coming on and seeing they could connect with them directly. But also they could post their projects that consultants can see and apply for and work on, and so it's a place that people can connect and learn to be consultants. And I always say it's a way to accelerate your knowledge sharing. That creates flexible work options so you can share your knowledge and you can create flexibility for yourself. And so that's sort of what I'm doing with the consulting nest and that's what I'm building out.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. We'll be sure to link it out because I know there's a lot more coming with the consulting nest and I think it's a 2.0 version, and I think I liked how you framed it, like teaching individuals in these kind of different areas to become consultants. I think that's like a big part of it as well, and then the marketplace is going to help connect organizations and individuals. So best wishes on that. I think I'll be following along personally on LinkedIn and I hope our listeners will be as well, and I think, as we kind of wrap this episode up, any parting words of wisdom that you want to offer individuals in terms of really kind of like. I think the theme I got out of today's conversation was like paving your own path based on how you want to build your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, both in my own consultancy, my career, the consulting nest and the successful candidate course that I have, the biggest thing that I always tell people is that it's just knowing your worth, like just knowing that what you offer is valuable to someone, to some organization, to some place.
Speaker 1:And I feel like sometimes we don't know our own worth, we don't know that what we actually possess is valuable and our unique challenges and you know, what I'll share as parting words is what I tell my daughter all the time is that you're the only you there is in this world, like there is no one else that is as unique as you, that has your experiences, your approach to life, like you're the only one that was born to your parents, that was raised in your city, that has your name, that went through school the way that you did. Like there's no other person that has the same sequence of events that, if you do, you are and how you look at the world. So just knowing that and knowing that because of that, you have something to offer to the world and it could be something that you're doing right now. It could be something that you don't know you're going to be doing very soon, but tapping into that potential and just always taking the risk, because, yeah, it's always more reward when you take the risk right.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Anjiza.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:Hey, I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you want to get the links or information mentioned in today's episode, you can head over to phspotorg slash podcast and we'll have everything there for you.
Speaker 2:And before you go, I want to tell you about the Public Health Career Club.
Speaker 2:So if you've been looking for a place to connect and build meaningful relationships with other public health professionals from all around the world, you should join us in the Public Health Career Club.
Speaker 2:We launched the club with the vision of becoming the number one hangout spot dedicated to building and growing your dream public health career.
Speaker 2:And in addition to being able to connect and build those meaningful relationships with other public health professionals, the club also offers other great resources for your career growth and success, like mindset coaching, job preparation clinics and career growth strategy sessions in the form of trainings and talks, all delivered by experts and inspiring individuals in these areas. So if you want to learn more or want to join the club, you can visit our page at phspotorg slash club and we'll have all the information there. And you know, as a space that's being intentionally curated to bring together like minded public health professionals who are not only there to push themselves to become the best versions of themselves, but also each other. And with that I can't wait to see how this is going to have a ripple effect in the world, as we all work together to better the health of our populations and just have immense impact in the world. And I hope you'll be joining us in the Public Health Career Club.