It was a bright July day the first time I walked into the Vantage Point office as a full-fledged employee. Maria Turnbull walked up to me to give me a hug of welcome and introduce me to the team. I had come from the arts having spent three years working as an assistant in an Art Gallery followed by the role I had just left at a for-profit magazine working in social media marketing and circulation. I was coming from the world of large American conventions, and felt ready to embrace the not-for-profit sector again, and what better place to do it than Vantage Point.

I started my journey at Vantage Point as the Education Events Coordinator. Someone mentioned that I was the “nucleus” of Vantage Point, and my role would allow me to touch on every aspect of our work and that I would be the first point of contact for folks interested in engaging with Vantage Point through our open-enrollment workshops and labs. And damn, did that end up being true! I heard from every facet of our sector and began to develop relationships with the amazing people that make up our sector. I remember phone calls from folks wanting to learn about how Vantage Point could support their development and how almost every call would end in laughter and a mutual feeling of support.

It wasn’t only the wonderful people within the sector who made me excited for work each day; it was also my fantastic co-workers who were some of the hardest working people I had ever met. Our lunch hours were spent together as a team because we liked to hang out together. We would spend lunches chatting about things that interested us (yes, lots of Netflix), and I have honestly never laughed so hard as I did during some of those lunches. We would celebrate each other and our successes, and I started to feel like I could do anything at Vantage Point and started to poke around to see what else I could get involved with in our work. Through the art of asking (magic happens if you just ask), I had the privilege of conducting stakeholder interviews with several different organizations and learned to what scale of effort went into our consulting work. I was allowed the opportunity to support our BOSS conference and worked with the team for two consecutive years to make the conference a memorable experience for each attendee. 

Eventually, I moved into the role of Communications and Events Manager, where I was handed the host baton from Maria for the From Our Vantage Point podcast. Maria graciously gave me the autonomy to adopt the podcast as I saw fit. In my next role, I built new relationships and continued our work to lift the sector and was always there to help whoever might end up in my inbox or on the phone, just as I had done in my Education Events Coordinator role.

As Vantage Point moved to continue our learning in equity, inclusion, and decolonizing work, we focused our communications to ensure our community saw themselves in our messaging. We developed our first Diversity and Inclusion workshop, which I have had the great privilege of facilitating over the past two years. My role changed again as my curiosity took me to other aspects of Vantage Point’s work. I added Inclusion Manager to my role in late 2020 and have had the pleasure of working with the team to grow our competencies in this important work and work with our members in the newly developed Justice, Equity, Decolonization, and Inclusion (JEDI) Peer Network.

I have grown a lot at Vantage Point. I have become a not-for-profit leader who champions JEDI work within our sector; and certainly, my curiosity led me to where I am now but, in all honesty, if it hadn’t been for the people I work with at Vantage Point, I’m not sure I would have made the same leaps I was able to achieve in my three-plus years with this fantastic group of individuals.