I began my career in broadcast advertising at a media agency in Toronto. This led me to work as an in-house media planner for a large telco company, where over time I grew into roles in customer analytics and marketing technology management. But as I grew older, I became more convinced of the need to respond to the growing global climate and biodiversity crises. I returned to school to retrain as an ecological technician where I was introduced to GIS. To me, GIS represents an opportunity to enlist skills from my past career to help me achieve my goal to drive positive environmental change in Canada. Winning an Esri Canada scholarship has helped me to advance my education, develop new skills in GIS and spatial analytics, and enabled me to distinguish myself to potential employers at the outset of my new career.