Career Start

It was 1972 and president Idi Amin had given Uganda’s 50,000 Asians – mostly Indians of Gujarati origin – 90 days to leave the country, stripping Uganda of many of its entrepreneurs and business owners. Anticipating the dictator’s irrational decree, Shilpa Kotecha’s family had emigrated from the country six months earlier and eventually settled in Canada. But her mother’s twin sister was left behind in the increasingly chaotic African nation – until the Canadian government opened its doors to Uganda’s refugees.

Her family’s tearful reunion was captured on the front page of The Globe and Mail that year, an indelible image that Kotecha, 33, would never forget.

"Thanks to the generosity shown by Pierre Trudeau to give the displaced Asians of Uganda a new home, we’ve been staunch Liberals ever since," says Kotecha of her family.

With roots in Gujarat, Kotecha’s parents had actually grown up in South Africa and Tanzania. Like many Asians at the time, their families had arranged for her parents to meet and, over an ice cream cone, they learned they had much in common – enough, in fact, to agree to marriage.

Her father became an accountant in Uganda while her mother took care of her two older sisters. When the troubles started, the young family relocated to Tanzania and then to Canada on the advice of friends. Shilpa Kotecha was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and her arrival convinced the family to make Canada their permanent home.

"My father worked as an accountant for the Hamilton Board of Education, but he be-came interested in teaching later in life. He ended up teaching Accounting and Economics at a private school near McMaster University," Kotecha recalls.

"He found the work very rewarding, as the school attracted many international students from Hong Kong and China. I think he empathized with all those young people who had travelled from across the globe, trying to find their way in a strange, new country. He enjoyed interacting with the students and helping them."

Kotecha’s own education was the topic of much discussion at the family’s dining table.

"Like many Asian parents, mine were trying to convince me to pursue a profession such as medicine or law. But I had a different goal: I wanted to be a journalist," says Kotecha. "They weren’t happy about it at first, yet they supported me when I went off to Ottawa to study at Carle-ton University."

But her choice of program did not live up to her expectations. She found the assignments stifling and too technical, not And after four months, she transferred into the Arts program.

"While my parents had gotten used to the idea of my becoming a journalist, which could be considered a profession, they couldn’t understand why I would abandon that to study liberal arts." They cautioned her to find something "more stable".

Unfortunately, while she was still at university, her father passed away at the relatively young age of 62. His death was hard on the family; Kotecha took a year off to return to Hamilton to support her mother. She worked in a hotel, waiting tables.

Kotecha eventually enrolled at McMaster to resume her studies, graduating with a degree in English literature in 2000. It didn’t take her long to find a job.

"I ended up working for a small firm, doing marketing and communications for them," Kotecha says. She also found the time to get married to her long-time boyfriend, who had relocated from Ottawa to be close to her.

Still, she found her work unsatisfying. The tasks became repetitive and boring; after six months there was nothing new to learn and there was little to challenge her at work. She started looking at post-graduate studies to give her new skills and lift her out of her predicament.

Communications and Public Relations at Centennial College in 2001," she recalls. The one-year graduate certificate program is designed for college and university graduates who want to learn specific public relations skills that are sought after by many corporations. It was a good fit for Kotecha.

"I liked the fact Centennial offered smaller classes – there were only 15 of us – and many of them were a little older and mature like me, which made me feel comfortable. And it started in January, which meant I didn’t have to wait until September to return to school."

She also liked the fact the program focused on corporate communications, a specialty that was particularly appealing to Kotecha. Corporate communicators write media releases, stories for employee publications and company communications plans. They manage projects such as special events, media conferences and company web pages.

The biggest appeal for Kotecha was Centennial’s emphasis on internship, which puts every student in an eight-week job placement with a real employer. With the help of faculty member Christine Smith, Kotecha was able to arrange an assignment with audit firm kpmg.

After graduating from Centennial, she joined a publicly traded company to do investor relations. Because the company offered shares that are bought and sold on the stock market, it required a lot of communications (media re-leases, newsletters, web content) to keep investors apprised of cor-porate developments that could affect share value.

It was exciting and intensive work that garnered a lot of excellent experience for Kotecha. However, after one year, she learned that kpmg was looking for a media relations manager and leapt at the chance to rejoin the company.

kpmg llp is a global network of professional firms providing audit, tax and advisory services in 148 countries, employing 115,000 people. Kotecha was given the responsibility of providing media relations across Canada on behalf of the company.

Her work is varied and vital to kpmg, especially when it comes to crisis communications – when the organization has to answer for issues highlighted by the media.

But Kotecha takes it all in stride.

"Public relations is an exploding field. It’s not about ‘spin doctors’ anymore," she says. "With the advent of convergence and social media, Canadian corporations really need communications professionals to get their messages out effectively."

She credits her success – she’s been in the job four years now – to a lifelong interest in learning. Kotecha plans to pursue post-graduate studies on a part-time basis in addition to helping to raise the couple’s young son, Shiven.

"You have to pay constant attention to new trends," Kotecha advises.

"That involves never stopping your education."

You could be eligible for a Desi News Scholarship to study at Centennial College. For more information, please call 416-289- 5000, ext. 8849.

CLETUS CASTELINO
president
KARZAFREE CONSULTANCY
& CREDIT COUNSELLING SERVICES

www.pyasa.ca