City Trees

Sarah Quann is a program manager at Tree Canada, the same organization the author works for. There are many oppor tunities for women to pursue careers in trees and urban for- estry, be it applied practice (e.g. arbo- riculture, developing tree inventories), policy development (e.g. implementing bylaws), or academic research and edu- cation (e.g. contributing to advancing discourses and sharing knowledge). I'm thrilled to see the interest in the field growing among women. I'm grateful for the oppor tunity to be around so many inspiring women with mutual interests and I'm thankful to work with a team at Tree Canada where 12 out of our 15 staff are women! It's impor tant to keep in mind that it's not only the women with whom we work who motivate us—in fact, much of the time it's the ones closest to us. In my case it's my big sister who I look up to dearly, a full-time corporate real estate manager in downtown Toronto and a mother of two. I was reminded of my affection for my own students at the end of the Women in Trees Conference; the graduating students surprised the organizers by planting two trees in their honour on the Fleming College campus. In addition, as a thanks to all three speakers, the organizing committee wanted to give us something to do with trees and wisdom. They presented us with owls carved by Gerald Guenkel, retired Fleming College Forestry Professor. Needless to say, these are beautiful and I will cherish this gift! A huge thanks to Katrina Van Osch- Saxon and Adele Russell from Fleming College for organizing a wonder ful event. Thank you to my co-panellists who offered invaluable insights from their own experiences: Daniele Fleming from Ontario Power Worker's Union, and Jessica Kaknevicius from Forests Ontario and co-founder of the Women in Wood online network. Lastly, I want to thank the 100-plus women who attended the event—it was an amazing experience being in the treetops with you all, and I am looking forward to future collaborations! 8) Volunteer with different groups: Working with interdisciplinary teams offers opportunities to learn from different viewpoints and deal with conflicting personalities. My experi- ence volunteering with the Toronto Cancer Prevention Coalition, a mul- tidisciplinary board made up of dif- ferent departments from the City— Urban Forestry and Parks, Child Services, Public Health, as well as environmental groups and academic representation— taught me how to navigate differing priorities and ask complicated questions that may not always render positive responses. This taught me that even when peo- ple share the same mandates and goals, their methods and ideologies might not be compatible. 9) Take professional development courses: Professional development courses and coaching opportunities are a great way to learn more about yourself and others. A colleague and I from Tree Canada recently took a course on management and it proved to be quite insightful about conduct, social psychology, and conflict res- olution. We left with tools about understanding decision-making pro- cesses and how we can better adapt our management skills to be more empathetic and inclusive. There are many organizations that offer profes- sional development courses to their staff on topics like management, business development, time man- agement, and professional conduct. 10) Read!: Take the initiative to learn about the things you want to know more about, be it field related, special interests, or personal growth. There are a plethora of books and articles available for self-improvement. Some of the suggested readings from the course I mentioned above include: Mindset by Carol Dweck; Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler; and Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I would have liked to read these sooner in my own career! www.urban-forestry.com 13

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