Danielle Bertrand

I attribute my success to, first, my faith in God, but also my resilience to keep going while having joy while doing so.

The best career advice I ever received was when I was deciding whether to pursue my master's first or my teaching certifications first. A more senior teacher told me, 'No, get your teacher certification, you can get your master's later, start teaching, and start being qualified.' The advice was get the qualifications, and then add the other stuff later. So, do what you need to do to get in the door first, and then you can keep moving up as far as degrees are concerned.

I would say use your network. Reach out to people that you know, because they might not be the decision makers, but they know the assistant principals, they know somebody that works in HR, they know the PTA president, or whatever that looks like. So definitely lean into your network intentionally, and not just assume that people know what you do. You actually need to tell them on a very consistent basis.

Some of the biggest challenges are that corporations or even school districts don't see the value until it's too late, like until people are leaving out of the door instead of putting measures in place so they won't even get to that point. But that's also the opportunity - to say, hey, let's talk about this now, before it's time for summer break or Christmas break, when people are really debating if they're coming back or not. It's about educating them on how to get ahead of the issue before it's actually an issue. As far as the bottom line, they end up losing more money when you have to continue to train new people versus you keeping the people that you already have, and they just have strategies to do the job successfully, professionally and personally. I think a lot of corporations just focus on professional development, but if the person isn't good, no matter how much professional development they get, it's still not going to yield the results that they were looking for.

Definitely integrity, showing up in excellence, and being an encourager - but that doesn't just stop at encouraging. I'm somebody that provides actual strategy for people to move forward in whatever they're working on.