I'm Deanna Dalla-Vicenza. I'm Executive Director of the Regina Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is a business organization. My role as Executive Director is to manage the staff and put into place those directives which come from the Board of Directors. My work history is sort of a mixed path because I came at it probably in a different direction than many people would. When I married I stayed home to raise my children for quite a while. By the time my children were in their teens I had done however an awful lot of volunteer work - a great learning experience. I was probably doing it full time. When that stopped giving me back some satisfaction it was almost by accident that I was offered a job. I was working as a volunteer on a Chamber of Commerce committee and through my husband's involvement with the chamber I became interested in one of their education programs. A contract position came up and they offered it to me because they felt that I had the skills to deal with it and it was really finding employment opportunities for high school students that were identified as potential dropouts - to give them some real practical work experience. That sort of evolved over a couple of contracts and when a marketing position became available at the office they offered it to me as well. I had no sales experience but I took a couple of courses. I think a lot of what our involvement is in the Chamber is a commitment to the community and I felt I had that. That evolved over time to becoming the Manager of Membership Services which was membership sales and marketing of all of their products.

When I left Sioux St. Marie, I came to Regina in 1983, I dropped in to see the person who was managing the Chamber at the time or who was Executive Director, introduced myself, and a position came open within three months and I became Assistant Manager and as time went on I worked about three years in that position and that was mostly administration so I was building my skills. I went to work at the Better Business Bureau for six years as Executive Director.

When the position at the Chamber as Executive Director came open, I applied for it, went through the screening process and was successful. I've been here now five and a half years.

I don't think I set out a path until I really came to Regina. The first part of this career in non-profit organization, as I said, was almost by happenstance. Once that happened and I realized what I like to do and what my strengths were, then I pursued the career path a little more. I think I'm a fairly creative person. I like variety so I'm stimulated by change and not change for the sake of change but I think I contribute that to an organization and when I feel that I am no longer doing that then I feel it's time to move on and I think that's important in recognizing that. Absolutely change is important in terms of non profit work. There's an evolution in business happening anyway. Business isn't conducted the way it used to be volunteer organizations. People are still wonderful at volunteering but they can't give the time they used to so you have to be able to adapt to what they can contribute so staff has to do different things and you have to be able to recognize what those changes have to be to make the organization tick. I think you need good people skills. I think you need to like people. You need to have very strong organizational skills, good time management skills because you're called upon to be flexible and to jump in at any time and we don't always know what our days are going to be like and I'm sure that's true in a lot of businesses but it's probably truer in an organization similar to the Chamber of Commerce and I think I lend myself to that well. We could not function without some hundred and fifty volunteers. We have to put a team together and you have to be able to work. My job is primarily with the Board of Directors. The staff works more with the individual committees. I may work with the Chairs to help guide what's happening but that's the message's guide. These people are leaders in the community. They recognize what they want to contribute and you need to have the ability to work with them to tap that.

Positive attitudes are important I think in anything you do. If you don't have a positive attitude about your job you're not going to give your best. There's no question about that.

I think training is the most important element but training can be quantified in terms of both experience and practical hands on and formal education and this kind of job it integrates a whole variety of those things.

Experience is important, too. It's very difficult to rank people skills I think that without people skills you couldn't do this job either. I guess ultimately the experiences is what has been most important but training is almost equally as are people skills. It's very difficult to give people advice on career path to suggest that that my way was the right way. I would suggest that if they're looking at non-profit work understand that you're not going to get paid at the top of the range. It isn't like working for government. I guess it's the enjoyment that you get out of the work. You have to like your..but that's most important is liking what you do. And I think that if you like what you do the money can be secondary in a lot of cases. I don't think there's a better opportunity for people to grow both intellectually and experientially than working with an organization like the Chamber of Commerce.