Published on Huddle Today on Sep 12, 2016
I decided to leave my job as a casual reporter at CBC New Brunswick to join the team at Bonfire, a marketing and communications firm in Saint John. I was prepared to jump ship and embrace my inner Peggy Olsen as I took my storytelling abilities in a different direction. At least, that’s what I thought.
There’s no shortage of creative people with brilliant ideas and the drive to make those products and services a reality.
But some in the business community say there’s a shortage of people who can sell them on an international scale.
Yet, one of these challenges is the lack of a skill so essential, it’s no wonder the province has been struggling economically for the past few decades:
Half of New Brunswick’s adults are functionally illiterate. And looking at the recent numbers from the school system, progress is slow coming.
On a sunny May afternoon in 2015, I went to Second Cup in uptown Saint John to meet my new boss, Allan Gates.
After working as a casual at CBC New Brunswick for a year fresh out of university, I decided I was going to make a leap “to the dark side,” as journalists like to call it, and go work in communications. Twenty-fifteen wasn’t an easy time to be a CBC employee and there were layoffs across
One evening in November last year, I got a call from my cousin, Matt, in Massachusetts.
Though Matt is my cousin, I consider him more like a big brother. Video chatting with him and his fiancé, Evan, several times a week had become routine. Since the pandemic halted our annual visits to see each other, it would have to do.
SAINT JOHN – Even when he was in the British Army serving in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Cyprus, Tony Klipin was making furniture.
“Even though I served probably half my career in Northern Ireland and I was in the first Gulf War, I was still building things,” he says. “When we had range days, all the ammunition came in huge pine crates. I used to save them and knock them to pieces and make a piece of furniture out of them. I’ve always been creative that way.”
HALIFAX — In 1870, Thomas Dixon, a pharmacist in Yorkshire, England, created a skin balm that aimed to treat a variety of skin issues his patients were dealing with.
He formulated the balm with high concentrations of natural active ingredients he knew would help to tackle skin redness, itching, inflammation, cracking and dryness. His formula needed to actually work, he thought. Otherwise, his customers would take their business elsewhere.
Over 150 years later, Dixon’s philosophy still runs deep in Skinfix, a Halifax-headquartered company that’s taking the beauty and skincare world by storm in the United States and Canada through beauty retail giant Sephora.
Published on Huddle Today on Sep 12, 2016
I decided to leave my job as a casual reporter at CBC New Brunswick to join the team at Bonfire, a marketing and communications firm in Saint John. I was prepared to jump ship and embrace my inner Peggy Olsen as I took my storytelling abilities in a different direction. At least, that’s what I thought.
You need to be diverse, flexible and of course have the education crucial for the jobs that will need to be filled today and for years to come.
Yet, with all the talk about how we need to teach kids to code and build robots in Grade 2, one important skill is getting left behind in the conversation: creativity.
There’s no shortage of creative people with brilliant ideas and the drive to make those products and services a reality.
But some in the business community say there’s a shortage of people who can sell them on an international scale.
Yet, one of these challenges is the lack of a skill so essential, it’s no wonder the province has been struggling economically for the past few decades:
Half of New Brunswick’s adults are functionally illiterate. And looking at the recent numbers from the school system, progress is slow coming.
But it may not be that simple.
It’s been a wonderful experience so far, with ample networking and access to potential clients to build their product. They’re totally in their element; they’re where they’re meant to be. However, running a tech startup isn’t a walk in the park, especially if you’re a woman.
“I’ve honestly gone home a couple nights and just asked my co-founder if he wants to switch titles,” says Flanagan, who’s also Itavio’s CEO.
According to Statistics Canada, just over half of the province’s population is functionally illiterate. We’re also not that great at science, math and adult skills in numeracy, literacy and problem solving in “technology-rich environments” either.
