Written by Aishwarya Sen an aspiring Public Relations professional from Seneca College.
Kallee Lins, Publisher, Cultural Manager, and Communications Specialist at Dance Current, exudes passion, drive, and talent. I had the pleasure of interviewing her for my last PRofessionals & Coffee chat, where we discussed recognizing one’s transferable skills, working at non-profits and melding one’s passion with profession.
With her spirited personality and exciting career trajectory, Kallee was an absolute joy to interact with.
Kallee is a graduate of McGill University with a bachelor’s in Political Science and Theater. She hails from Castlegar, British Columbia and moved to Toronto in 2012 to meld her love of the performing arts, research, and writing. Kallee is a trained dancer who sits on the board of directors for the Dance Umbrella of Ontario and Dusk Dances and volunteers for the policy and research network Mass Culture.
Kallee’s work allows her to stay close to her passion for dance while also pursuing her love of writing and communications.
During our coffee chat, Kallee emphasized accepting roles that might not traditionally fit your career graph. She mentioned saying yes to different roles and how it elevated her skill set as a communications practitioner.
“My career trajectory arose from just saying yes to a whole bunch of different activities that may not fit under what a communications manager is expected to do,” Kallee adds. “You never know what you will enjoy until you do it.”
Kallee discovered her flair for writing as a student journalist at McGill University and soon realized the value of the transferable skills that she had acquired.
As part of the coffee chat, I asked her about the importance of identifying and showcasing one’s transferable skills to recruiters.
“It’s about identifying the discreet skills,” Kallee points out. “We are so programmed to look at the outcome and focus on the big picture that we undervalue all the small skills we have acquired.”
She noted how we take our skills for granted and focus on things we are not good at.
“It is important to work on skills where you have deficits, but it is equally important to clearly see things you do really well.”
My interaction with Kallee was uniquely insightful and set a great example of always being willing to take up various opportunities at the start of your career. Showcasing the added value that you bring to the table was another important key takeaway from our interaction.
For the latter part of our coffee chat, we spoke about the demand for technical skills like Canva, Adobe, Mailchimp and Hootsuite.
For anyone trying to navigate their technical skillset, Kallee had a great piece of advice –
“Don’t discount how much experience you need in order to say that you are familiar with an application or software. If you have used it in the context of your work to any degree, then call that a skill you know.”
