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As a mother of three sons in university, she has continually engineered her own personal strategies to maintain a work/life balance while fostering a successful career. Using her own Life Project Plan, Brenda has continually been able to re-balance her life whenever different circumstances would challenge and disrupt her, creating a personal imbalance. The plan in essence consisted of proactive methods which allowed herself to realign her priorities, goal setting, skill development, and celebration of success. This allowed her to re-establish control of her own life and create what she phrases as her Beacon of Balance. She shares the story of her career here as an inspiration to those who want to achieve a lifetime of balance and fulfillment. Brenda’s career story begins in 1986. She was the mother of 3 young children as well as a full-time worker who commuted to Toronto each day. With the combined demands of long work days, and being a parent, she quickly realized that life was out of balance. Her first milestone occurred when she realized that her current situation was not acceptable and that she needed to change her daily life. Brenda’s goal was to find part-time employment and preferably with her current employer, however she learned that this was not possible. While the news greatly disappointed Brenda, it motivated her to look inward to find an alternative solution. She took time to assess her skills and strengths as well as her education and passions. Given her existing career as a computer technologist, the ever-changing computer technology marketplace intrigued her. Using this as an impetus, she took a bold step and decided to make the first major change of her career. The new personal computer marketplace was growing at an explosive rate and quickly becoming a ubiquitous corporate resource. Suddenly a new industry was being created; that being the Personal Computer Education Market. Brenda immediately took note of this industry and decided to hop on for a ride. She re-tooled her skills and then transferred jobs internally, accepting a position as Corporate Trainer. She continued to refine her skills and soon developed a strong passion for training and development. One year later in 1987, keeping true to her goal she made her second bold career decision and resigned from her job. Brenda’s first consulting business, Benedet Computer Consultants was created and she achieved her goal set out one year earlier as she was now working from home on a part-time basis.
Over the next three years, Brenda worked part-time developing and delivering training programs for Fortune 1000 companies. She had become a pioneer of the emerging home office environment as she developed her business while nestled in a converted bedroom home-office. To this day she still mentors entrepreneurs and professionals who are going through the adjustment period and challenges that are faced when working from home. By 1990, all her boys were now in school, and she decided it was time to ramp-up the business. Her network was well established in the industry, both in Canada and United States. Through this network, a chance meeting led to a departure from “consultant” to that of “sales distributor” of Computer-based Training (CBT) software. Her sales career had now begun. Brenda’s natural powers of persuasion proved very effective in this new role and she reaped the benefit by growing sales revenues over 40% per year. Brenda turned to her personal and professional network again and was mentored and coached personally by several expert sales executives. She gladly credits much of her sales success to the commitment of her mentors. Things continued to grow and develop until 1992, when suddenly another career change loomed on the horizon. That year she co-founded New Technology Training Ltd (NTT), the exclusive Canadian distributor for CBT Systems Pty. (Ireland). Over the next three years NTT flourished with a compounded annual growth rate of over 100%. A national sales and customer support force was put in place which she led as VP, Support & Service. Brenda’s abilities allowed her to coach, mentor and lead her team to continually exceed their goals both professionally and personally. Brenda was also known industry-wide for her expert consulting skills and development of e-learning marketing models. She became a regular key-note presenter at conferences throughout North America. Brenda’s success resulted from a deep-rooted belief in working hard and being committed to succeed. However the level of commitment required to maintain the levels of success desired was rising year after year. The results of this were that she was now working longer hours and traveling extensively. Once again she found her personal and professional lives clashing and creating yet another personal imbalance in her life. It was time for Brenda to re-visit her Life Project Plan and establish new priorities once again. To that end her family purchased a lake cottage in northern Ontario where they could retreat for weekends and holidays over all of the four seasons. Brenda has reflected upon this decision often and realized that it proved to be the best investment in family they ever made. This became the catalyst for a positive shift in her personal priorities where weekends were coveted and focused entirely on family. At the same time the success of her company was not going unnoticed. As the technology marketplace boomed and the dot.com revolution emerged, computer-based training was now coined E-Learning and the market landscape began to change globally. Their Irish supplier had now become a publicly-traded company, and created a vision of becoming a truly global organization. They began to acquire their distributors around the world as part of their growth strategy and NTT was included. The sale of her company was completed in 1996. To their credit, Brenda and her partner successfully managed a transition of all operations and systems and did so with an impressive 100% staff retention rate. She was retained to lead the Canadian support organization and over the next several years, the business continued to grow exponentially.
Throughout the company’s global expansion, Brenda held a number progressive North American executive positions. In 2001, she was eventually appointed as Global Vice-President, Customer Support. This was a truly challenging position that required strong leadership skills to develop a cohesive world-class organization. Brenda also traveled the world delivering key-note addresses and presentations to thousands of people. Among her specialties were seminars and workshops on organizational learning, change management, return-on-investment (ROI), and marketing. Through her travels she learned much about diverse business cultures and the need to “Think globally, act locally”. She was responsible for the successful consolidation and standardization of divisional best practices and business processes, which contributed to strong customer retention levels. She has also been quoted numerous times in trade journals, articles, and presentations. Predictably, as is consistent with the growth phases and maturity of any new industry, the e-learning market saw a consolidation of industry leaders. Major industries leaders were merging and Brenda saw the effects of this first-hand. In 2003 the balance of work/life again was once again becoming an issue due to regular global travel. Brenda decided to make one more crucial life decision. Her decision was to spend more time with her now university-bound sons. She decided to take a “Vacation from work” which allowed her to pursue her personal and family interests as well as her philanthropic goals. Brenda then began what amounted to a two year “Sabbatical from her career”. In her own words, Brenda describes this decision as being based upon the fact that “I just wanted to be home for dinner again.” During the following 18 months she rediscovered her passion for the performing arts and pursued further education in screenwriting, acting and television production. She has also fulfilled her philanthropic goals and derived tremendous pleasure while volunteering for the Toronto International Film Festival and the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario Speakers Bureau. She was also appointed Council President in 2005. Serving her community had always been a longtime, but elusive goal for her due to previous work travel commitments. However it seemed that balance was now on the horizon! Brenda is lifelong learner and consistently seeks out new challenges. She enrolled in a coaching course and discovered quickly that instinctively she had been coaching people informally for most of her life. Again a new dimension for her career was about to unfold. It was now time to formalize her coaching. Today, two years after taking her “career sabbatical” she has found a new passion in life as a professional Corporate Executive and Personal Performance Coach. Brenda has embarked on her newest goal which is to help others achieve success. Brenda’s own story is testament to the fact that being able to put one’s life on Priority Project Status is the key to achieving fulfillment and balance. Change is to be expected and should be embraced at each phase of one’s life. Brenda is a strong believer that one’s innate skills, values and passions combined with formal and informal education are cornerstones for a fulfilling career and life. That was the exact purpose she developed her “Life as a Project” ™ program. Let’s put Life on Priority Project Status!
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