Life After Mac: Real Stories of Alumni Finding their Way- Jennifer
Whether you’re currently in the midst of your undergrad, graduated sometime ago or well advanced in your career, I believe we can all agree on one thing — Life isn’t easy. It’s full of ups an downs, happiness and sadness, wonder and despair, achievement and failure. Through all of these little moments, we learn. We learn our strengths our weaknesses, we learn what brings us joy and sorrow, we learn who we are and who we want to be but most importantly, we learn it takes grit, determination and stamina to succeed.
I graduated with a psychology degree, business minor and like many recent grads I was bright eyed and bushy tailed waiting for my next adventure. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to land a job only a few days after graduating. I found myself at a law firm helping clients who had been hurt in car accidents. I won’t spend much time here as frankly I don’t have fond memories, however, this position taught me one very important thing. I did not belong in the social justice world, but rather in the corporate one.
Fast forward one year and I found myself working amongst designers and programmers in the world of corporate eLearning. I was fascinated with the technology, the digital advancements made and was determined to ingest and learn everything I could to advance. While working fulltime, I completed a degree in Adult Learning & Development. I stayed in this role for 3 years pushing to improve my knowledge, skillset, increasing the value I could bring to my workplace everyday. Shortly after, I was offered a position as a training developer at GE Appliances Canada. In this role I was driven to build a successful training culture and effectively launched our Canadian eLearning platform, developing every piece of content from scratch all in 6 short months. As you can imagine, this was not an easy feat but I knew I had to put in the work and time to build something important. While in this role, I also sought out and completed a Master’s Degree of Education and Instructional Design. My entire journey but most notably the time spent juggling full time work, family and a graduate degree brought me new perspective about what it meant to strive for and push towards my goals. It taught me the importance of resilience and perseverance, it taught me that you must do the difficult things each and every day, for even if you fail, you will succeed.
Today, I head up the Digital Marketing team at GE Appliances Canada. I’ve progressed from corporate eLearning to the all-encompassing world of digital. Together, we get to reach thousands of consumers everyday through various forms of digital media. Through strategy, experimentation and fine-tuning I am able to show consumers our products, features and innovations in a way that influences desire and results in purchase. This is something that could not be accomplished without drive, determination and teamwork.
My last but equally important thought is one of gratitude. I am grateful for and must thank the few extraordinary mentors I have had along my journey, for they have recognized my potential, provided opportunities and helped guide me to accomplish my goals. I leave you with this, my one piece of advice, my mantra: Learn, bring your grit, bring your passion, ask questions and simply do the things you think you cannot do.
Jennifer Jakob, M.Ed
Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour ‘10
Digital Marketing Manager
GE Appliances, a Mabe Company
The McMaster Alumni Association, over the course of the next year, will be featuring one grad’s career story each week. If you graduated in the last 10 years and are interested in sharing yours, please email Nada at elnaien@mcmaster.ca.
If you are looking to get started on your own journey check out resourcesavailable to recent graduates through the Student Success Centre.
