Nicole Archambault

I just always saw, growing up, great examples of people following their dreams, or their passions, or having that drive or ambition in really whatever it was they were doing. So, I think that's just kind of more ingrained in how I go about day-to-day life. Seeing those role models who pursued what they were passionate about really shaped my approach to my career and personal life.

I've been told it by two mentors in arguably different mannerisms in how they portray it, but essentially, they guided me towards always looking to what you're passionate about, and improving upon those things and finding ways to incorporate that into your work. And it's okay if those things continually change. Those priorities continually change over time. That's just a normal part of both personal and career growth. It's about following your passions and understanding that it's natural for those passions and priorities to evolve throughout your career.

I think not necessarily about entering our industry specifically, but really entering any industry, one of the things that I did young was reach out to local experts in a field, and I set up opportunities to shadow them at work. I got to do that for a lot of different types of avenues to find out what kind of really clicked with me and what was interesting to me to find out what you really wanted to pursue. And it could be something completely different than what you originally thought. So I think having that kind of practical observation and experience young is very important. My university was designed around that philosophy with the co-op program, so it really let you test out and test drive careers early on in your schooling, to be able to really find what fit for you.

I think one of the biggest opportunities is probably continuing to advance the field with incorporations of more technology and AI development and how we could really use those tools to bridge some of those gaps, or even with aggregation of data, and things of that nature. That's a big opportunity and area that's being explored. I think one of the hardest factors is probably making sure to have others, like in larger leadership roles or things of that nature, truly understanding what the field is and how it is truly of a benefit, and making sure that those principles are taken into account. AI's ability to pull data from so many sources in such a quick manner and aggregate them really accelerates the getting knowledge in your hands portion.

I think probably some of the ones that would always carry over between work and personal life would be being authentic to yourself and maintaining a high level of integrity in both your work and personal life. Holding yourself accountable in both of those avenues is important. Respect and compassion for others are key values for me. And I think in order to probably show up as your best self in both avenues, creating a good work-life balance is pretty pivotal. You have to be able to set boundaries and rely on the expertise of others as well.