Herzing Blog

Cheryl Michaud’s original plan was to become a teacher. But when she was partway through her education degree, a change in her personal circumstances made her realize she needed to get job-ready more quickly. So she enrolled in the legal assistant program at Herzing College.

That was back in 2004. Since then, she has supported lawyers in both small and midsize firms, worked as an executive assistant to a couple of chartered accountants, assisted a group of provincial court judges, and played a key role in the legal services department of city government.

Along the way, she kind of fell into office management, developing systems and processes to keep operations running smoothly. That eventually led her to management positions supervising other legal assistants. Today, as part of her position she’s in charge of hiring and training assistants for a firm that offers legal support in more than 20 different areas of law.

We interviewed Cheryl recently to learn more about her career journey and what advice she has for people considering this line of work. Read on for the highlights.

Nothing in Ayodele Daini’s background had prepared him for a career in information technology. On the contrary, he’d spent years working in the fields of agronomy and property management. But he’d always been interested in tech, and when he moved to Canada he decided to make that his new career path.

That led him to enrol in the online cybersecurity program from Herzing College. After an intense year of study, he graduated in April 2023 and quickly landed an IT security job with a major Crown corporation.

We spoke to Ayodele to get his thoughts on the training and his overall career journey. Here are the highlights of that conversation.

After earning a degree in advertising in the Phillippines and spending years working in sales, customer service, and business development, Marikit Dela Cruz was looking to enhance her skills specifically in the area of supply chain management.

Herzing’s program was available online, which made it easier to fit both work and study into her schedule. So she took a chance and enrolled.

By the time she graduated in March 2023, she had already secured a job as a purchasing assistant with the very same company where she’d done her internship!

We caught up with Marikit to find out what she thought of her Herzing experience and what advice she would pass on to other students.

Here’s her story.

After a university experience that didn’t go well and an enjoyable-but-taxing stint as a childcare provider, Naomi Penner knew she wanted something different.

A radio ad for Herzing College caught her attention. Why not pursue a diploma in broadcasting, which she’d been interested in since she was a kid?

This was late 2020, when pandemic restrictions still made traditional classes difficult. Fortunately, Herzing’s program was available online and gave Naomi the flexibility she needed.

She is now the morning show host for Now Country 104.7 and handles social media for three different radio stations in Winnipeg.

We spoke with Naomi recently to learn more about her experience at Herzing and how her career has unfolded since graduation.

When Kehinde Akande came to Canada in 2018, he knew he wanted to pursue additional education.

He already had a chemistry degree and several years of experience in environmental issues, but he was looking to get more into health and safety. After researching several OHS programs, he chose Herzing’s because it was online, flexible, and fast.

It proved to be a good decision. When he graduated in October 2022, he was offered a job as a health and safety advisor—at the same company where he did his internship!

We spoke with Kehinde recently to learn more about his experience. Here’s his story.

The software development field has changed enormously over the past two decades. Today, there are hundreds of different programming languages for various uses, the focus is on cloud computing, and agile methodologies allow for faster, more collaborative development.

Naresh Nagandla has plenty of first-hand experience with these changes. He’s been working in the software field for more than 15 years, in both development and teaching roles. And he recently became an instructor for the software development program at Herzing College.

We caught up with Naresh to learn more about his career journey and what students can expect from the course.

Here are the highlights of our conversation.

As an experienced psychiatric nurse and instructor in Herzing’s Community Support Worker (CSW) program, Kim Melnyk was used to having lots of in-person interactions with students and people in recovery. She wasn’t the biggest fan of technology; she much preferred a more personal touch.

So when COVID came along and forced her to shift to teaching online, she had to make some major adjustments.

Initially, Kim was very much looking forward to a return to class post-pandemic. But when it started to occur, she found that it did not solve the problems she thought it would. Instead, she found herself doing more and more interaction online—and discovering benefits she had never considered before.

We spoke with her recently to learn more about her experience.

Updated January 2024

When a person gets hurt on the job, both they and the business feel the impact.

The injured employee must deal with missed work and lost wages. Meanwhile, the company may face fines, staff shortages, production slowdowns, lower morale, a damaged reputation...the list goes on.

The importance of health and safety in the workplace cannot be overstated. That's why occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals focus on preventing workplace accidents and injuries and promoting employee well-being. They do this by creating policies and providing training on emergency evacuations, hazardous material handling, machine lockout procedures, fall prevention, harassment, and much more.

Our community lost a cherished friend, colleague, and leader when Bill Riches passed away in April following a battle with cancer.

You may have already seen Nicole Fontaine at one of the dozens of online and in-person events she’s attended over the past few months.