AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Dr. Roberta Neault, Roberta Neault, PhD, CCC, RRP, GCDF, CCDP has over three decades of eclectic professional experiences, which include career counselling and coaching, corporate consulting, and counsellor education.

Roberta's strengths lie in her professionalism, infectious enthusiasm for empowering individuals and organizations, and "hands-on" experience working with diverse groups of people. Her pragmatic "can do" attitude ensures that customized solutions are innovative and affordable.

Equally comfortable with leadership / executive teams and those just entering the workplace, Roberta has worked with individuals and groups from diverse cultures, educational levels, and employment experiences, across all stages of life.

Deirdre Pickerell, MEd, CHRP, GCDF, has over sixteen experience as an educator, manager, and career management professional. She has made significant differences within the field of career development through innovative program design, leading-edge education for career practitioners, inspiring facilitation and career coaching, and selfless leadership and mentoring throughout the sector.

Deirdre's day to day work includes teaching, program development, facilitating seminars and workshops, and assessing/coaching private clients. In each of these areas, Deirdre "pushes the envelope" in the field - seeing needs, championing change, measuring outcomes, evaluating progress, and tirelessly working to ensure that her clients' and colleagues expectations are constantly exceeded.

Deirdre is chair of the BC Career Information Partnership (BCCIP) and is completing her PhD in Organizational Systems.

Steele O'Neil and Associates, Inc, was founded by Susan Steele and Barbara O'Neil in 1997, in response to a need for an organization that could provide employment training in the East Kootenays.

Steele O'Neil now manages Employment Assistance Centres in Kimberley, Invermere and Port Alberni, and delivers a number of other provincial and federal employment programs in the Kootenays and on Vancouver Island that assist clients to find meaningful employment, gain indepdendence and have rewarding lives.

Steele O'Neil has also been elivering the Basin Business Advocates Program since 2000. Funded by the Columbia Basin Trust, this program has provided free business counseling and consulting to close to a thousand established businesses in the Kootenays and throughout the Columbia Basin.

Karae White, owner of Morgan Ebbett Career Services, has provided heart-felt career services for 15 years. In the words of her colleagues: "Karae is a compassionate, creative, service and community oriented professional who has been instrumental in developing quality programs that meet the unique needs of a very diverse mix of clientele."

"Karae's holistic and solutions focused approach is what sets her aside from other more typical offerings. Karae's service experience is not one dimensional - she works equally well with a wide variety of people."

"Karae is as committed to her clients as she is to building capacity in the community as is evidenced by her numerous volunteer contributions." "Karae passionately believes life is too short for the wrong job." "Karae is passionate about helping othrs to find fulfilling work ans she is an inspiration to those she comes into contact with.

Bruce's level of commitment, experience, knowledge and expertise are demonstrated in many ways. Firstly, he actively participates in and pursues academic research. Bruce is also committed to building his own knowledge and the knowledge of his clients. Recently, he and I developed the Feelings Catalogue and Emotional Management Protocol. Bruce's ability to research is second to none, his ability to conceptualize and use knowledge is unique, and he applied his experience and expertise in such a way that the end result was a counselling tool and protocol that is client-friendly and highly effective. Bruce has also developed a number of counselling aids which he presents at conferences and to practitioners in the Langley area. During my years in the same company as Bruce, I witnessed him developing and updating existing teaching and counselling material in an ongoing manner. Bruce is never content to leave an idea at "good enough." When he finds new or better information he is quick to make changes to his teaching material and counselling practice. Bruce also searches the assessment catalogues and tries out new assessments frequently. His knowledge of vocational assessment is vast.

The PARC team is currently and continually publishing cutting-edge career research studies and articles (see partial list below) for a variety of professional and academic journals. These writings add to the literature and assist career professionals in theory and practice. Research is based on unemployed adults; a critical, yet grossly underrepresented norm group.

The team specializes in vocational assessment.

In addition to assisting psychometric companies improve their tests, the team has recently upgraded their own multiple intelligence instrument (COMIT-R). The Lifework Domain Matrix (LDM) and Contextual Grid (LDG) are being using by an increasingly varied array of practitioners as a structured interview assessment.

Similarly, many practitioners use counselling tools created or adapted by the team including the: LDM, LDG, Triple-A-Counselling Method, Typology of Influence Patterns (TIP), Feelings Catalogue, Emotional Management Protocol, Statistical Interpretation Guides (SIGs), and other aids. In addition to their commitment to formal academics (as both teachers and students) the team pursues informal learning over a wide range topics including: the change process, unconscious incompetence, MI, and data ethics.

The team demonstrates community leadership by sharing discoveries, thinking, research, and methodologies with their clients, students, funders, professional contacts, and fellow career practitioners.