Wendy Dupley
Executive Director for Economic Development at City of Abbotsford
Mrs. Dupley, your international experience is vast: you lived and worked in various countries. Please describe briefly your experience of working abroad.
I come from Abbotsford, British Columbia. I’ve lived in Abbotsford for almost a year and a half. There I head up the Economic Development Department, which I helped to create. The city of Abbotsford hadn’t been involved in economic development and didn’t really know what that meant. Before that I was heading up an organization called the Economic Development Alliance of South East Alberta for which I was Executive Director. It was quite a big team covering a big geographic region. And before that I had been working for the government of Alberta as the Executive Director for labour attraction. I was doing a lot of work with attracting workers to come to the province to fill some of the shortfalls in certain skills and trade occupations. As you can see, that also aligned with the program that we were running here in Ukraine that is focused on the workforce development.
Before that I was working at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. I was working for the Australian federal government in the area of immigration. That is where workforce strategy started for me. And that was also my first government position. I moved from the United Kingdom to take a position with the Australian government. That was one of those positions that was really career changing because of the scope of the work and opportunities for professional growth that it gave me. Working in Washington, DC, my position was as regional executive manager. What that meant that we managed the Australian immigration regional offices all around the American region. That was Ottawa, Mexico-City, Buenos-Aires, Santiago, Brasilia and of course, Washington DC. As the regional executive manager, I was responsible for managing the whole budget for the complete region which was a bit of a nightmare because you have transactions happening in fairly volatile currencies, such as the South American ones. You try to rectify that against the Australian dollar. That was challenging, and, on top of that, I had managed the whole program as regards migration and visa delivery, making sure that we were delivering against our targets. I was also responsible for compliance and financial management. That meant if the Australian auditors were coming into any of our posts, which they did on a random basis, with very little notice of their arrival, my job was to ensure that all the posts had complied with the regulations. So, at least when the auditors arrived, and we were assessed there was nothing that caused a high risk or concern.
In Washington, I went to congressional hearings, to all major immigration think tanks. It was a great opportunity to learn. I really had an amazing boss that was a great mentor. She was very sharing and invested in my development. She would go to a meeting and she would say that she met with them because of this reason and explain why it was important to our mandate. It helps you as an individual grow, develop strategically and connect dots. That was really one of those career changing positions for me. From that growth opportunity my career went from strength to strength. That position gave me the opportunities to work in countries that I would never have otherwise experienced and get to understand their culture, work with their local staff.
Up until that position I had worked, studied, gone to school in the UK. Of course, I have been to Europe many times, but never to Ukraine. When I left the UK in 2001, Ukraine was still emerging. So people wouldn’t really travel to Ukraine. I went to a lot of main European countries, such as Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, all the usual European destinations. I worked for a Dutch company for a while just before I left the UK. It was part of the Randstad group. They are a global job company. Back in 2000, they were launching a very forward-thinking HR program. In 2000, the Internet was very slow, emailing was only just starting to become more prevalent. They launched a program that was a skills-matching program. It seems today like really basic. It was the equivalent of an online dating, because the HR manager would go into the system and say I am looking for the person who has these skills, and the system would have all those people with their profiles looking for work and the system would match it up with the HR manager and share lots of possibilities. It was very forward thinking for the time. They wanted to launch the project in the UK, so they hired me as one of their agents in the UK to do that. That was interesting. I got to spend some time in Amsterdam. That was great.
In the UK, my experience was all private sector. And that is really important for economic development because what we are doing in economic development is almost intermediary piece between the government and the private sector. We are helping facilitate those connections and those discussions between those very different thinking entities. The private sector does not think like government, it does not act like government. So you need to understand where both sides are coming from. In Canada, sometimes the regulations and the bureaucracy are very difficult for private sector to navigate. In economic development we almost hold the private sector businessman’s hand and helping them get through that process to set up their business or to expand their business. Due to my experience with the private sector and government sector, I can see it from both angles. That is very helpful because I know how to help them work together. My background in the private sector is extremely varied, this is really helpful in economic development as you deal with many different industry sectors.
When I first finished school I worked in the manufacturing and engineering sectors. I think I go for those male-dominated type sectors! Within that arena I did everything from starting out generating invoices when I first left school, to contract negotiations to sales and business development. After I left the manufacturing sector, I went to the financial world. My first position there was with American Express. I also worked with Barclays Bank. After six and a half years in the financial sector I had enough with that and then I went back to the supply chain organizations. I was only 25 when I received a senior leadership position. I had 30 staff at that time; pretty young to have such a responsible position which was challenging.
What is interesting about me is that in 2012 I married a guy who was living very close to me. He is Canadian-born from the province of Manitoba. But both of his parents are Ukrainian. They came to Canada with my husband’s grandparents as very young children. My husband and his two sisters were born in Canada. They came from Western Ukraine. His mothers’ family was definitely farmers. It is really unfortunate that they changed their names, which was quite usual for this period of time in Canada. When Ukrainians came to Canada back then, the immigration system was not what it is today. Most of the names were changed. They would become English, North American type names. My husband’s family ended up with a French-sounding name – Dupley. My husband has never been to Ukraine but he is fascinated about the country. His parents came back to Ukraine when they retired to revisit their fatherland. My husband was working at that time, so he couldn’t join them. By the way, he was taught by his mother to make borshch and cabbage rolls!
What did you study at university? What is your major?
I studied history. Some people think that is boring. My parents asked me what I was going to do with that unless you wanted to become a teacher. But I really enjoyed history. That is the only thing that I miss being in North America because there is nothing that old there. I grew up in the UK where we still have Roman roads and walls and old cathedrals. If feels great to be back in Europe; especially, here in Kiev. Your history is amazing.
What are your impressions of Ukraine, Kiev and the training you participated in over the last three days?
It is the first time in Ukraine for me. I didn’t quite know what to expect. You don’t really feel a country until you go to a country. I think that it is an exciting time for Ukraine. In some ways people realize that they are on that stepping stone, where there is so much opportunity.
Ukraine feels European. I found the people very open, warm and polite. They have old school etiquette. The customs that I have experienced, such as a toasting custom, is adorable. As regards Kiev, the roads are in worse conditions than I thought they would be. I didn’t expect the roads to be in such a bad condition. The traffic is crazy. I would never drive here ever (laughing). I stayed in a great area of the city. It felt safe. As a comparison, for example, when I first went to Buenos Aires, I arrived at night. I went out to explore and I didn’t feel safe. So I went back to my hotel. But every time I have been out here, I felt very comfortable and safe.
I attended all three days of the workshop. I think that the workshop was very good in the range of topics that it covered. There was a lot of information. The program starts to follow up individually with each community. At that point, I think the leadership in the program and the staff will be able to get a good feel for how much information the participants were able to absorb and take onboard. When you start working one-to-one with people, you can gauge where they can act better. The people at the workshop couldn’t speak English, but they still they would try to communicate. They were all very friendly and welcoming. I think that the presentation by PLEDDG Director Alexander Kucherenko of the certificates was very nice. Participants really seemed to appreciate that. The translators were amazing. It is the first time that I have worked with simultaneous translation. Whenever I presented in the past in a foreign country, it was always consecutive translation – you talk, then they talk. So it was that was quite different for me. All the sessions were relevant to local economic development. It was the right length of course. The FCM staff in Ottawa and Ukraine office is very talented and really helpful. They made it very easy to come here and do this mission. I would certainly recommend it to anybody if they have an interest in participating, because it is a huge learning opportunity if you haven’t been anywhere internationally. You are so well looked after when you are here. Overall, it ALL was great!