NATA PR – Who is NATA of NATA PR?
For the next three episodes, I thought I would tell you about my personal and career stories, to answer the questions of everyone who’s wondering how someone starts a public relations agency that’s now been in business for 20 years.
In the first of these three episodes, I’m taking some time to tell you about my educational background and training.
My name is Natalie Bibeau. I was born in the United States, and my parents chose to live in Canada when I was still very young. I did my schooling in French, my native language, in Quebec Province in Canada. My first name is spelled Natalie, without the ‘h’ the French use, because my godfather admired Natalie Wood.
It took me a while to find my way, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I’ve always envied my friends who knew when they were very young that they wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Since I liked math and music, when I was finished with 11th grade at the age of 17, I decided to enrol in pure sciences at the college level so I could go on to study engineering at university.
After a year in that programme, where I wasn’t enjoying myself the way I had in my science and math courses, I started to question whether I wanted to be an engineer. I realized that there were only guys in my classes. Yes, you have to remember that in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the engineering profession was still mostly men. I was often the only girl in my class. I quickly realized that if I stayed on that path, the guys I was studying with—and had very little in common with—were going to be my colleagues in a few years. It was a real wake-up call. So I knew I didn’t want to work in that world.
But what could I do? Change programs? But to study what?
Today, whenever young students ask me what program they should enrol in, I always tell them to choose what they love before choosing a program. You like to write and discover authors, so why not choose to study literature? Writing and news are your passion, so maybe you should pick journalism.
Since the advent of the internet, everything has been changing so fast and so there will certainly be new professions popping up. For example, when I was a student, there were no social media managers. But we know that speaking a language and loving to learn will always be core human activities. Studying the arts, literature, languages and writing might seem old-fashioned, but they’re in demand today and will certainly be in demand tomorrow.
For me, it was my love of classical music that guided me. Today I know that human beings perform once they figure out what it is they love. So, the key is finding what you love and then matching it to a program that appeals to you.
I’d been taking piano lessons since I was eight years old, and the happiness it gave me pushed me to look for that state of joy and pleasure.
At 18, I’d transitioned from private piano lessons to what the Vincent d’Indy Music School, a major music school in Quebec Province, called the Lauréat II. So I was easily able to change programs and enrol in music at the college level.
And that’s how I studied music at university, five years in all: two in college and three at university. I loved those years of study. They inspired me and gave me a reason to get up in the morning and keep challenging myself.
In the next podcast I’ll tell you where that first job took me, and how life provides so many choices and possibilities.
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