Career Options
Blazing a trail for womenCarol-Lynn Chambers' career is red hot, thanks in large part to Lambton College. SHARON ASCHAIEK -- Special to Sun Media |
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Chambers: Premier’s Award winner.
The operations manager for emergency planning and strategic development with the Ontario Office of the Fire Marshall says the knowledge and skills she gained from Lambton's former Industrial Hygiene Technology diploma program has been essential to her trail-blazing career.
"My college program gave me practical skills and specialized knowledge in public safety and fire protection," says the Sarnia native, who graduated with high honours from the program in 1985.
Chambers, who enrolled after already completing a BA in science at the University of Western Ontario, which enabled her to complete the three-year program in two years, says she particularly appreciated learning from industry-connected experts.
"You get a premier calibre of instructors with great technical knowledge because of their affiliations with local industry," says Chambers, 48.
A career in the fire service has been a lifelong dream for Chambers -- "my dad always bought me fire trucks for birthdays and Christmases" -- but her Lambton training enabled her to put her passion into action.
PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS
The comprehensive training she received in hazardous materials management and fire safety helped ignite a dynamic industrial fire service career that began in the private sector, with Chambers working for companies, including 3M and another Fortune 500 company, in Canada and throughout the United States.
While working in Manitoba for a time, Chambers also served as a volunteer firefighter and ambulance attendant in order to cultivate her public emergency services experience.
After 15 years, Chambers was keen to shift gears into the public sector, and responded to a job ad for deputy fire chief of London.
"Back when I graduated, there weren't a lot of opportunities for women in the public fire service," she recalls. "But with this job, they were looking for someone with leadership, problem solving and management experience, which I had acquired in my training and industrial career."
Chambers immediately took to the job, and was eager to further hone her abilities and apply her skills at the provincial level. With the financial support of her employer, she returned to Western part time to complete a master's degree in public administration.
"I liked what I was doing, but I thought, 'there's more.' I wanted to get a broader sense of the municipal world," she says.
To expand her professional repertoire, Chambers joined the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as a senior policy adviser on local government issues.
In 2002, Chambers made the leap to her current role, in which she manages programs such as Provincial Chemical/Biological/Radiological/Nuclear/Explosives. Other key parts of her job include training and assisting the approximately 400 municipal fire departments in Ontario, and responding to major emergencies -- last year, her crew was at the Queen West fire and the Sunrise Propane explosions.
Fire prevention is as much a focus for Chambers as response, and to that extent, she has pioneered innovative new educational initiatives to help municipal fire chiefs and politicians create safer communities.
"I really feel able to influence public fire safety through what I'm doing now," she says. "I like working with emergency service professionals and municipal leaders, and especially, bringing stakeholders together to find consensus on different issues."
Recently, Chambers was recognized for her significant contributions to community service with a 2008 Ontario Premier's Award -- an accomplishment that she says stems in large part from her college education.
Says Chambers: "In addition to the technical skills, my post-secondary training provided me with so many other important skills -- critical thinking, teamwork, leadership -- that I use every day in my job."
sharon@summitmediagroup.com
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