From selling contents from a storage locker on eBay to making stickers to returning to school, FEAS alumna reflects on her career journey and where it’s led her today
FEAS alumna, Catherine Cook didn’t pursue her master's studies immediately after completing her undergraduate studies—far from it, in fact. While she originally planned to apply and underwent the application process, Cook never submitted her application fee. “I didn’t fully believe that I would get into grad school,” Cook explains.
It wasn’t until the following school year when a professor asked her former classmate why Cook hadn’t returned to school, did she realize that pursuing her master's was a feasible option. “At that moment, I thought, ‘Man, I would have gotten in.’ My professor was clearly rooting for me, so I made a bit of a miscalculation there,” Cook describes.
Cook went on to have a substantial career with the City of Toronto and kept this idea of grad school at the back of her mind. But, in 2003, after her youngest son was born, Cook decided to take time off and later quit her job with the City. “The cost of daycare for three kids is ridiculously expensive, and after doing the math, it didn’t make sense to continue. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore as well,” says Cook.
While taking time off, Cook explains how a friend from Florida needed help selling her items. “Long before Storage Wars was a thing, my friend was married to this guy who used to buy storage lockers. One day she called me and said, ‘Oh my god, my husband just bought a locker and it contains all the contents of a restaurant. What am I going to do with all this commercial stuff? How am I going to get rid of it?’” During a time when e-commerce was still in its infancy, Cook began assisting her friend by selling the items on eBay.
Although this began as a small project, like a yard sale, Cook describes how it has evolved into a business that is still running today. “We both learned a ton and she created a massive business out of it, which builds food trucks,” says Cook. “I always thought about how I helped her start this thing in sort of a de facto way. I was never really part of it, but the whole entrepreneurial thing intrigued me.”
In 2013, Cook decided to re-enter the workforce. With her only experience being her roles from nearly a decade earlier, Cook found that her only option was to return to working with the City, only this time, she found herself in a position lower than her previous one where she was making stickers.
“I was making less money than I had been making years before, which was kind of soul-crushing because you get used to a certain level of performance and responsibility,” says Cook. “I thought about all of the experience I had and my degree, but I worked for a year making stickers. And, from a business point of view, the job was a business process that should have been automated.”
That’s when Cook started re-thinking the idea of grad school. With a background in environmental science and waste management, Cook was interested in moving into the energy management side of the industry. In 2016, Cook began the Professional Master’s Diploma in Energy and Innovation (PMDip) at the Centre for Urban Energy, which provides participants with the knowledge and skill needed to work in Canada’s energy sector.
Completing the program in 2017, Cook leveraged the new experience she gained and academic references to apply for FEAS’s Masters of Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MEIE). “After helping my friend sell her items online, the whole idea of entrepreneurship was appealing and that’s what attracted me to the program,” says Cook. “By pursuing this program, I wanted to reconnect with an old piece of myself, while getting out of that sticker job I had at the time, and that’s exactly what I did. I managed to get a business analyst job with the City, which looked at the performance management of our shelter system.”
Today, after graduating from the MEIE program in 2019, Cook is a management consultant at the City of Toronto working with the customer experience team. With 44 divisions in the City and multiple lines of business across those divisions, Cook’s team is working to rebuild and enhance a digital customer experience for the people of Toronto.
“I feel like I’ve come full circle. I thought that I would take this program and maybe leverage it to build my own business, I never thought I would take it and transform the public experience,” says Cook. “I think that’s one of the most interesting pieces of my story, which is understanding that even if you’re not working as an entrepreneur, being able to think like one is important across many industries, not just in the startup space.”
Reflecting on her career journey, Cook says her biggest advice to FEAS students preparing for life after graduation is to try out different jobs.
“I hate to say it, but I think it’s really important to job-hop and start exploring what’s out there,” says Cook. “Use your 20s to experiment and figure out what you like, what you don’t like, and who you are. Don’t feel bad for changing and doing different things because all of the skill sets you gain might not tie together at first, but you can always draw on them later.”