When Judith Moreau was working as a career guidance counsellor, she learned that there are often two types of people when it comes to work.
“Some people are really directed into one path and other people are surfers,” she said.
Moreau (Social Sciences, 2001) identifies more as a surfer, willing to jump on new opportunities as they appear and keep an open mind.
Now a project leader working on organizational development at Pomerleau, Moreau started her journey at Champlain College.
“I come from the farm. It was a big stretch to go to Champlain and discover a bigger town and getting to know so many people,” she said.
Moreau was motivated to come to Champlain to improve her English language skills.
“I come from a Francophone part of Quebec and I just wanted to make my own path,” she added.
At this formative time, Moreau wasn’t too sure what her path would be so she consulted a career counsellor at the College.
“The guidance counsellor told me to become a guidance counselor!” she joked. And so she did, but first Moreau enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces.
She was a member of the reserves for seven years and was even deployed to Bosnia in 2002 before taking a release in 2006.
Moreau said during that time she completed her bachelor’s and master’s in guidance counselling from UQAM.
She said her time in the army still has an impact on the way she works now.
“In a way, it prepared me for the rest of my career,” she said. “It helps a great deal for stress management. And you depend on people, that’s what you learn in the army. You cannot work alone. Those are my two takeaways.”
In 2007, Moreau started working as a guidance counsellor at the YWCA Montreal in career development.
She then jumped over to the private sector, working for a few years in career development before making another leap to work in leadership assessment and development.
It was at this point that she discovered organizational development. Moreau describes it as a way to “bring change to an organization so that it leads to more performance and more wellbeing on the employee side.”
For Moreau, passion and interest have always gone hand in hand with success.
“I was really an average student in high school, but when I found Social Sciences in Cegep, I was on the honours list because I really liked it,” she said.
“When you really find what you like, you become good at it.”
Judith Moreau’s advice for current students and recent grads: “Trust your feelings about what you like and what you dislike. Don’t try to do something because it’s what your society or your parents want you to do. To me, it wasn’t clear but it became clear the more I grew. Trust your instincts and don’t try follow what people say.”
