Growing Good Things – Rebecca Ramsey
For 2023, I set my New Year resolution to “grow good things.” At the time, I was at the beginning of a new chapter of relationship/family life and was positive and excited for the year ahead. This growing of good things: new relationships, healthy habits, and quite literally a backyard garden over the past year has me reflecting on how at its core, professional development is personal development, that begins long before you graduate from school.
My personal development can be attributed to my family, wonderful mentors, and the unique places I’ve had the opportunity to work in. I’d like to humbly offer some thoughts on what is helping me grow my career.
Taking every opportunity to learn & be useful
My first job was on a small farm outside Stouffville, Ontario, at age 11, where I worked as a mini jack-of-all-trades on the same farm my dad worked on when he moved to Canada. I learned how to handle pigs, quick ways to pick and stack vegetables, and how to deal with the boredom of repetitive work in the fields. My parents had incredible foresight to support this, as it taught me the value of hard work and how to make myself useful. To this day, I enjoy hearing about peoples’ early jobs and what they gained from that experience because it can be a humbling insight into their character and scrappiness (best story I’ve heard is a former colleague’s first job working nights on a worm farm in Brampton).
Carrying an open attitude towards work into my future roles opened up opportunities for growth – from volunteering as the student minute-taker for the Toronto Metropolitan University Research Ethics Board for two years to joining projects outside my “urban planner” comfort zone at Perkins & Will. I have found that the questions “What can I learn?” and “How can I be useful/impactful?” have helped me develop self-awareness at different stages of my career and enabled me to maximize my impact on the teams I am a part of.
Looking outside Toronto
In Canada, most of our planning discourse focuses on what’s happening in a handful of large urban centres – particularly the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). While it’s true that about a fifth of our national population lives in the GTA, I have found that there’s an incredible amount of relevant work happening in smaller Canadian cities and places across the United States that provide insight into what is possible in the GTA.
After graduating with a master’s in urban planning from Harvard, I worked in Minneapolis and was blown away by their approach to parks, transit, cycling infrastructure, and the authenticity of their arts and culture. I was also alarmed by the social divides.
When I moved back to Toronto after 7 years abroad, it took a lot of energy to rebuild my network and the social and financial structures of life. In some ways, I felt like I had taken a step backward, but this experience of “rebuilding” was actually a personal development accelerator. It took time to find my bearings and catch up on Ontario politics, but the perspectives I gained from working in the American Midwest continue to shape my professional practice and connections here in Toronto.
Growing doesn’t always mean doing more
As I have entered leadership positions as a young woman, I have come to realize that my work-life balance is intentional: something I create for myself and for those around me. What’s talked about less is that balance does not have to mean a 50/50 split between work and life; balance can be a unique equation for people and can fluctuate at different points in a person’s life.
During the pandemic, I was extremely career-focused – truthfully, there wasn’t much else to do! Now that I’m settling into life with a partner and his two kids, the balancing equation has gotten a little more nuanced. My growth in the next few years will likely be just as much about family life as it is about traditional professional growth. To be honest, I’ll probably have to simplify “stuff” – volunteering, industry commitments, etc. – to focus on what brings me happiness at this stage of life and connect more with creative outlets that I’ve put on hold. In doing so, I know I’ll also be a better leader, colleague, and person.
As I look ahead to planning my perennial and annual plants for the backyard, I wish everyone all the best with growing good things in 2024.
Rebecca is Vice President (Acting) of Development at Metrolinx, where she focuses on facilitating transit-oriented development around GO stations. She holds professional planning designation in Canada (RPP) and the United States (AICP).