It all started when...

I was about six years old and my father printed notepaper with Suddaby Girls on the masthead and a board of directors composed of my classmates. My position, as I remember it, was secretary. I was programmed to be involved with not for profits and writing from the beginning. And minutes of meetings that I have taken for all kinds of organizations, span hours.

Growing up in Kitchener-Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada during the forties and fifties was a great time to live in a mid sized city.  I was on the new high school newspaper staff and later edited the high school yearbook at KW Collegiate in the school’s centennial year - which gave me credentials to join the literary magazine at my college, Trinity, at University of Toronto.  In the early sixties I thought I was special when I landed a high school teaching job right out of university. The truth was that anyone with a pulse could get a position with the number of post WW2 teens coming on stream.  And of course I became the yearbook sponsor at Runnymede Collegiate in Toronto.

I loved teaching - at St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s School in NYC, while my husband was studying at the General Theological Seminary. I subsequently taught at Cobden District High School and Opeongo High School in Renfrew County and Canterbury High School in Ottawa - and would have stayed with it, but suddenly there were layoffs as the student population diminished. Like many of my colleagues I became an arts administrator - where the expectation at the then Ontario Choral Federation (now Choirs Ontario) was that I edit a quarterly newsletter, teach the membership how to fundraise, tour with a youth choir, produce an annual conference, run workshops and support the board of directors.  After eight years I moved on in the 90's to work with Brian Arnott Associates, a firm that planned arts and cultural facilities.  In the middle of that time I became a software vendor for a speciality product called VisiMap, the first Windows based mind mapping software. I also worked as an independent business trainer and not-for-profit consultant.

The song, "I know a little bit about a lot of things" could be my theme song.  There is always more to learn and I have no intention of stopping now.