Meet Sonja Christopherson
Juggling a career, a family and university wasn’t easy, but it paid
off for Sonja. Today, she enjoys a successful career in training
and development, working for the Titan of Canadian franchise
businesses, Tim Hortons, at the company’s head office in Oakville.
Since joining the company five years ago, Sonja has designed and developed training and development programs for Head Office and was recently part of a team that collaborated with the Disney Institute to deliver hospitality strategies to restaurant owners and managers throughout Canada and the U.S.
“Going back to school to upgrade your education or learn a new set of skills takes time, but it keeps you in the game. And, time is going to pass no matter what, so working on improving your skills is a wonderful gift to yourself to make the best of your time,” says Sonja.
“And in this economy, if you’re not continuing your education you won’t be successful,” she adds.
It’s experiences like this, combined with a long list of credentials obtained through continuing education, that make Sonja a sought-after keynote speaker for the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario and at Mohawk College, where she has taught diversity through Mohawk’s Continuing Education program for the last 15 years. Last year, Sonja’s students chose her to receive an award from the School of Continuing Education.
She’s also a Mohawk student. Just recently she completed certificate in adult learning, taught through Distance Education. That she’s also a student often comes as a surprise to her students, she says. But it shows them that continuing education is an important part of marketing yourself and staying on top of the changes in your industry.
Sonja’s passion for education is the driving force in her career success. After earning her bachelor of sociology from McMaster, Sonja felt compelled to keep learning and began working on her masters in distance education from Athabasca University. Since then, she’s taken both general interest and skill enhancement courses to advance her career and carve out a niche for herself in the fields of education and diversity. She studied leadership at the Richard Ivey School of Business, became a certified Practitioner of Change from the Organizational Learning Institute, and even combined her love of horses with her career, obtaining her Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning (FEEL) certification, to gain a deeper appreciation of the horse/human connection.
After completing the adult learner certificate, Sonja says she has a deeper appreciation for the role distance education and online learning are playing in today’s academic and corporate training environments.
Organizations are looking for ways to trim costs without sacrificing the things that make them successful, like training and development, she says. Online and distance education have become valuable tools for corporations looking for innovative training solutions. The web is also being used as a collaboration and meeting space for corporations, meaning the skills student acquire in the virtual classroom will be put to use in the real world.
“Online learning gives you the ability to complete a course at your own pace. Online chat rooms allow you to communicate with your instructor and other students, and even complete group assignments,” she says. “And with many companies replacing face-to-face meetings with conference calls and virtual meetings, learning to collaborate via the web is a useful skill to develop,” she says.
Students today also want more flexibility in how they learn, she says. Putting courses or portions of courses online helps meet this need, and it’s good to see colleges like Mohawk moving in that direction, she adds. It’s not a replacement for classroom learning, she points out, but blended learning strategies definitely have a place in today’s wired world.
Sonja is putting her experiences with Distance Education at Mohawk to work at Tim Hortons where she is working on curriculum design and development that links to online learning strategies. She also plans to continue learning, and looks forward to continuing her studies through Distance Education at Mohawk.
