Alumni Profiles
Alumni in their own words - Kelly Hearne (CMBC '95)
Where has your life taken you since you left CMU?
I graduated from CMBC in 1995, which feels like a lifetime ago and yet only last week. There is this dual reality in my head where I feel like I'm still the same person I was back in the 1990s and my core personality is exactly as it was when I was sitting in the lounge in what is now Poettcker Hall, (but was back then, just 'the res'). That said, I also know that the emotional and mental growth I've gone through in the intervening years has almost transformed me into someone else. How can I be the same, and yet, completely different? I have spent a lot of time thinking about this.
When I left CMBC I ended up in Toronto working in what was the birth of the website development industry. I was designing and coding websites back when being able to just have photos aligned to your text was an exciting innovation. It was exciting and fit well with both my creative self and my deeply logical self who loves order and structure in all things. Those who knew me at CMBC and watched me work on both the CMBC newspaper called AYIN, and the yearbook, were not surprised I ended up in a role not dissimilar. Words, images, and layout—just in digital form.
I found myself working in advertising agencies just as they were trying to take control of this new way of communicating with people. Within a few years, I found that life to be emotionally unfulfilling and I felt surrounded by people who were not looking for ways to contribute to the communities they lived in. I was learning, that for me, community was everything. I did not come from a strong family structure, and building up and nurturing my friendships with the people I cared about was rapidly becoming the most important thing in my life. I could not have articulated it then, but I was building up a virtual community of people around myself that without the internet, never could have happened. It was to become all that much more important in 1999 when I decided to move to England. Suddenly I was 5,000 kms away from everyone I knew, and my internet-enabled, virtual community became a crucial part of my everyday life. A way to stay connected and watch my friend's children grow up and feel like I was participating in their lives. Watching their children grow taller was my mental marker for the years going by.
I stayed in website development for a lot of years, watching it crash and be reborn, before taking a career break in 2006 to go off and become a flight attendant for a couple of years. Those who know me well, know that I am a direct and blunt person and so, working in a very intense customer-service industry was not the most obvious match! Physically, it challenged me immensely—you would never believe the impact on the body of working at altitude for 17 hours in a row without a break, day after day. The altitude makes every physical task that must more impactful, and my body underwent a big physical transformation in the first six months. Working in a niche industry like that, that keeps such unsociable hours and schedules from the rest of society, meant that I ended up in a tight-knit community. Again, I could not have articulated it at the time, but I was looking for and nurturing a community around me.
After working almost 900 flights I was done with that little adventure and moved back into a desk job, taking a role in local government. I started out working primarily with residents who utilized services for people on a low income—low-income housing, financial assistance, extra supports in education and similar support services. Very quickly I was pulled into a newly created team in local government using a methodology called 'Systems Thinking' to redesign the way services were offered to the public. The idea being, when you can see the whole picture (or 'system') of how everyone's efforts fit into meeting customer and organizational goals, you can design better processes.
The very first team I worked with in this new role was garbage collection, and yes, I went and rode around in a garbage truck to see firsthand the challenges people had doing their jobs well! It was not long though before I was back in more people-oriented services. After many years in this role, I spent my last two years in England working with the health services, police, fire services, the charitable sector, and of course local government teams, to design and provide services for vulnerable adults in the frail years of their lives. It was all about working together as a community of services to provide the best experience for the people in our community who needed that extra bit of support to live independently.
You can see where I am going with all this. All my years since CMBC have been spent creating and nurturing community. I am the same somewhat socially awkward, blunt person, seeking structure and organization in all things (neurodivergence was not language we used back then), who spent hours in the lounge perfecting her card playing skills, as I've always been but I'm also someone in their 50s who has spent nearly 30 years learning about people, the way our minds work, the emotional and mental supports we need, what it takes to nurture community in whatever form you can, and how to live well in the framework of our society, that I scarcely resemble that girl. I am the same, and yet different. And it started in that lounge. It started with the community life that CMBC gave me.
When I moved back to Canada in 2018 after almost two decades away, it was an extremely difficult transition. I had to rebuild almost every aspect of my personal and professional life, having landed back with no job lined up and only a temporary place to live. I have always been comfortable taking big risks in my life, but this was the biggest. I would not have emotionally survived such a huge change as well if it were not for my CMBC community. All those relationships, with people I met over 30 years ago, relationships I nurtured from afar for so long, are now my in-person life again. And it is wonderful. I started learning what community was with this group of people back in my 20s, and now in my 50s, they continue to teach me about community every day. In the last six years, they have supported me through life transitions, through cancer, through COVID when I was a 'bubble of one,' and they have provided me with opportunities to support them too, which has been equally as valuable to me.
I am still doing the same kind of professional role as I was doing in England, trying to design better systems under the title of 'Process Engineer,' but I am working as a Consultant to the Insurance industry. I have found in this industry, a group of people deeply committed to trying to provide an essential service to the public, all the while, being a universally hated industry. There is more focus on serving communities in this industry than most people know and so it suits me well.
What of your experience at CMU continues to influence your life and/or work?
Without a doubt, learning how to live in a community! We have all gone in different directions with our careers, lots of doctors, lawyers, social workers, pastors, professors, community leaders—all things I jokingly call 'important jobs,' but to each other, we are still those same 20-year-olds who are figuring out who we are. We get together and act like the same goof bags, with the same genuine approach to conversation, the same kind of honesty that comes from undeveloped thought processes. But we also get to bring experience and growth into that honesty that enables us to challenge each other, support each other, and strengthen the community between us. It teaches me how to interact better with other people, personally and professionally because it teaches me to solve problems in relationships by giving me a safe space in which to emotionally grow.
What is a memorable story from your time at CMU?
For me, every memorable story comes back to some creativity being brought to the room. If it was not epic pranks in people's dorms rooms, it was Thanksgiving dinner in togas made from ridiculous floral bedsheets, or strange ingredients made into sandwiches (corn flakes and chocolate chips anyone?), or formal dinners that were a cavalcade of wacky thrift store outfits. Creativity was around every corner.
What advice would you give to a current student?
Lean into it. Living away from home for the first time—studying new and challenging subjects, interacting with all new people, enduring Winnipeg winters—can all be overwhelming at times. Stick with it, because the relationships you build here with faculty and students are going to help shape who you are. Even if this is just the start of your academic journey, a stepping stone to your next place of learning, whatever profession you end up in, your time here will provide you with a base of learning that is going to be applicable. You will learn to think, learn to write, learn to analyze information and spit out solutions to problems, and you will learn how to build community out of anywhere you end up.
We would love to hear your "Alumni in your own words" reflection. If interested contact Reynold at rfriesen
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