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You spend a quarter of your life at work - you deserve to find a career you love!
Hosts Katy and Emma talk with guests from across industries about their careers: what they love, what they've learned, and how they got there.
Plus, you'll get actionable advice to help you succeed at work, like how to feel confident in job interviews, what to do to avoid burnout and more. Explore career options and meet your goals with Work It.
0:00:06 - Emma
Let's work it, let's work it, let's work it.
0:00:33 - Katy
Hello everybody and welcome to Work It: a UVic Career Exploration podcast. My name is Katy and I'm a writer and communications professional who recently earned my MA in English from UVic, and I've actually been wondering for how long I can say recently, because it has been almost a year. I'm here today with my colleague and friend Emma. Hello everyone.
0:00:55 - Emma
Welcome back. I'm a recent co-op graduate which, like Katy, I guess it's a good question of how long I can say recent it's been a couple years for me now, but anyway, really excited for our episode today.
0:01:08 - Katy
Before we move into the bulk of our episode today, I want to, as always, acknowledge that we're recording at the University of Victoria and acknowledge with respect the Lekwungen peoples on whose traditional territory the university Songhees, Esquimalt and WSANEC Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. I didn't grow up here, but I've been privileged to live and work on this land for almost two and a half years now, and every day I'm still really humbled by the beauty and diversity of this place and I feel very, very lucky to be able to be here and to be chatting with Emma and our guests today on this territory. I'm really excited to be joined by Natasha Thambarajah.
Natasha is a third generation public servant who has worked for the province of British Columbia since 2006. Over the past 15 years, she has led nationally recognized transformative, citizen-centered public policy. Today, natasha is a director of digital health policy at the Ministry of Health, where she leads the development of provincial policies for virtual care and digital health. She's also a UVic alum, with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science. She also holds a Master of Arts from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Science in Public Health from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Welcome, Natasha. We are so beyond excited to chat with you today. It is so great to have you here.
0:02:35 - Natasha
I'm delighted to be here, good morning.
0:02:38 - Katy
So always in these conversations we like to start out by asking our participants about their career journey. When you started your Bachelor of Arts at UVic, did you expect or want to pursue a career in public health? Do you mind talking to us a little bit about that journey from when you first were a young, plucky BA student to where you are today?
0:03:01 - Natasha
Sure. Honestly, I slid sideways into humanities. Coming out of high school, I actually didn't know what I wanted to do, and, in fact, people that are far more interesting than me that I know about often didn't know what they wanted to do for the longest time. So for anybody that's listening to this, if you're not sure what you're going to do with your life, that's okay. That actually means you're thinking about it and it'll happen eventually. So I actually started in biochemistry and I was super lucky there was this historian I think his name is Dr Manny. He's probably a long retired by now. He allowed me to audit a third year history course with zero first or second year courses, and I nailed it. And I just remember having this pivotal conversation with him one day and he's just like I don't understand why you're in the sciences. He's like got a mind for the humanities and I didn't like it.
I took a year off and then I thought about it, terrified my parents and I actually went into the humanities and never looked back. So, no, I never thought I was going to be working in the public health sector when I was doing my undergraduate degree. By the time I finished it, there was a major recession happening. There were no jobs to be had and I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll go into academia. And the thing that spurred me into going into public health was actually when I was doing fieldwork for my PhD I was doing. Full disclosure. I'm actually a PhD dropout.
0:04:24 - Katy
I'm not sure you're supposed to advertise that in academic settings, but no, I think it is important to talk about these things as somebody that went to grad school. They really did try to talk us out of getting PhDs. They were like don't do it, it's a terrible idea. I don't know if that was your experience, but.
0:04:44 - Natasha
No, no, totally was my experience. So I was doing fieldwork in Southern India and a nonprofit was doing a sexual health intervention at the time. Outside of South Africa, the highest incidence and prevalence of HIV and AIDS was around Chennai, so in Southern India. So they were doing an intervention to promote the use of condoms and they had this huge question and they were like, well, we're distributing all these condoms and lube and we're not seeing a bend in incidence and prevalence for ages. Turns out they hadn't really thought about the relevancy of trying to do an intervention like that in India. Like, if you did something like that here in Canada, people will take the condoms, they're going to use them for the intended purpose.
There. They were using them to, you know, irrigate their fields. The weavers were using the lube to lubricate their looms, so they were taking the stuff, but the economic imperative was higher. That was the aha moment I had where I realized, okay, this is public policy at work. When I was living there, especially, like, just thinking about issues around women's sexual health, which was the thing I focused on, really got me thinking about it. So, yeah, I dropped out of my PhD and came back to Canada, joined the public service, never looked back.
0:05:52 - Emma
Wow, that is amazing. What a journey you've had so far, and I'm really curious to know what did it feel like when you got out of school and we were in that recession there wasn't a job to be had. Did that feel terrifying to you? What was it?
0:06:09 - Natasha
Like at the time. I remember a sense of resentment, right, you spent all this time and money giving up your youth doing. You know you could have been doing anything else. You know, when you're in school you have this investment and now you're like what am I doing with this? There were no jobs. I'll level with you.
In that summer, before I went away to grad school, I worked as a presser in a dry cleaner. I smelled like alkali earth every day. I worked in the service industry. Waited on tables and you know I actually think doing that sort of frontline service, even with an education, was so helpful because you learn things about client service. If you're not delivering to your clients at a reasonable level of what they're expecting, they're not going to come back and those lessons stick with you. And it's kind of funny. You know my spouse, and other folks I know that have worked in the service industry. They carry that experience with them into their professional lives. It does change the way you think about how you engage with people, conflict resolution skills. You learn all kinds of things. So like, if you don't find the job of your dreams right away, don't despair. Sometimes what doesn't look like what you want, it might be that opportunity you needed, and you won't know it until you've had the benefit of you know a retrospective look.
0:07:26 - Katy
That really makes sense to me and I can envision your experience one-on-one with people working face-to-face with customers really being valuable for you in the rest of your career, because, while you may not be face-to-face with the public every single day now, your work is still public facing and you're still thinking about people's everyday experiences. How would you describe what you do today in your current job to somebody who has no idea what public health is, what digital health policy is, who is just new to these things?
0:08:02 - Natasha
So I guess I'll start by explaining what is the function of public policy. It's effectively the ground on which we, as public servants, capture options for achieving a particular outcome, and when we're constructing public policy, we think about, first of all, okay, who did the people elect? What were the commitments they made when they were elected, what are the priorities of the government? And then, looking at the issues that we have in our portfolio and you're balancing this against okay, one of the things we need to achieve. So public policy is basically the way we set strategic direction for all. Government is the tool that we use to inform law. It drives how your services are delivered to you as a person, whether it's in the health sector or anything else. So in a regular day, I'd say a policy director, I've got a team and any given moment, my team is working on anywhere from six to 10 policies that are meant to address a particular question for the province. So they might be, depending on the cycle, they might be looking at an evidence base and doing a literature review. It could be that they're actually drafting a policy with me, or it could be that we're actually engaging with stakeholders, whether it's within the ministry or outside. Review draft policies, give feedback, have tough conversations. Aside from the pure policy making piece and I think a piece that we often don't talk about enough is weird administrators. So a lot of your time is spent responding to correspondence. People call we might be calling people back for the minister or the constituency office we spend our time particularly in policy.
We spend a lot of time working on project management pieces, so that could be contracts, project management of your overall work and communications. So we also think about stakeholder engagement and change management strategy, because inevitably, if you're writing transformative policy, part of the process is change management. We also spend time working with our colleagues on their projects. So, for instance, right now in primary care, we've made a very public commitment to set up processes for the entire province to register to get attached to a physician if you don't have one. So in a case like that, that's a cross ministry effort and so we're all working together.
Digital comes to the table as well to help. So it's kind of like a small snapshot of what we do, but we also try to break it up and have fun. So my team and I we're really into the idea of just actually spending a bit of quality time together, but on our terms and not some kind of awkward oh my boss is making us do this really awkward exercise and so I let my team decide. So I don't know. You guys must be familiar with Among Us, right?
0:10:42 - Katy
Oh yeah.
0:10:43 - Emma
Oh yes.
0:10:44 - Natasha
My team plays it together every three weeks, so you know it's a good way to get some work stress out. You know, stalk and kill your colleagues. It's a multiple end game.
0:10:56 - Katy
And you're bringing those communication skills to the table when you're deciding who to eject out the airlock.
0:11:03 - Natasha
Exactly. It's not all like you know the salt mines all the time. Like we have fun. That's fascinating.
0:11:09 - Katy
A lot of students probably feel like, oh, I don't know if I could work in that field. I've never done it before. But there are all these skills that people are building all the time Communication, project management, stakeholder management, team building, working with a team. So I think it's really great to draw those things out when I hear them.
0:11:26 - Natasha
Yeah, you're right. Like I think the way I described it you would be like well, how does somebody join a team like that? Most of the people that I've ever hired came straight out of school with little or no policy making experience. What I'm more interested in is do you have an analytical mind? Can you write and can you think critically? Those are hard things to teach. And then I think the last piece is your interpersonal skills. We work on really sensitive subjects. We focus on equity. I need people who are actually truly humanist at heart. So, like the rest, I can teach. It's hard to teach humanism to somebody if they haven't got that skill already.
0:12:07 - Katy
Absolutely. We talk about that a lot. There's a lot of skills you can learn, but shared values in a workplace and being able to align in that way, it's difficult to learn. Yeah.
0:12:18 - Emma
And it sounds like there's really difficult subjects that you're tackling and there's also some really fun things that you're doing at your work every day. What would you say is the most challenging part of your job for you?
0:12:31 - Natasha
That's a good question. I'm glad that you're making me think about this. I think the most challenging part of my job is changing people's minds. For instance, right now we are working out province-wide models for democratizing digital access to health information. Both for healthcare providers but for patients, the future is you get to see your entire health record.
0:12:54 - Emma
Oh my word amazing.
0:12:55 - Natasha
We're going to step into the 21st century for a second. Don't get too scared. You're going to get to do things like online scheduling. When you have surgery, somebody's going to notify you If you have a device, somebody's going to send you a little nudge and be like hey, don't forget, it's tomorrow, that sort of stuff. But that represents a really big shift in the way people think.
When I think about the work I did in transgender like a decade ago to modernize expression on all government ID, remove the requirements for surgery, include kids, the biggest challenge was changing people's minds. A lot of people were really worried about well, what does this mean? What does it mean if we include kids? What do people flip flop and getting their minds around sex, gender, different categories. You've been mashing them together for ages and really it doesn't matter how often somebody changes their gender identity. They could do it every day if they wanted.
I would say that's the most challenging thing. The other thing I would say is challenging is, although the landscape is changing and there are more women, the field is dominated by men's stuff. So if you look at upper level leadership in public services in Canada, they're dominated by men. Getting mansplained is a regular feature of my weekly life. Ladies, or anybody else who gets mansplained, don't necessarily have to be a lady to be mansplained. There are tools for dealing with it. There is hope out there, and I think there's a greater degree of tolerance for women not putting up with this. So I think that's good. And then I think the last piece is for all the BIPOC listeners out there. Leadership is not yet as diverse as it could be, and one of the things that I have conversations with at the leadership tables is we need to inspire future public servants by reflecting back to them what their potential could be in the public service, which also includes a diverse leadership. So I think those would be the three challenges.
0:14:48 - Emma
Well, and those are no small challenges for sure. I'm really interested about the part about changing people's minds because in today's climate I've noticed, especially online, there's been a lack of tolerance. I find If you look at a comment section on a social media app, I'm shocked every day by how people fight with each other over everything, every little thing. It's wild. So I'm really curious when you're doing this work and changing people's minds, has there been backlash to you or what's that process of changing people's minds about?
0:15:26 - Natasha
Yeah, you raised something interesting. I think there's been an increasing calcification of views, both on the right and the left. On both sides you're either with us or against us, kind of view. It does complicate the way you think about change. People tend to get really entrenched, I think, in terms of you asking well, how do you change people's minds?
There are a lot of different tools that we use as policymakers. So we use evidence and particularly in the digital health, the virtual care space. Canada is a very late comer to that, particularly with virtual care. It took a pandemic to move our country into using virtual care. If you don't believe me, go find the Commonwealth Fund reports that rank us at the bottom of all 11 countries for virtual care use prior to the pandemic. Canadians are very cute that way. They're very self-assured about the superiority of their health care system. I'm very happy my parents brought us here. Canada is a beautiful place, but we can do some work there. So, anyways, change. So evidence base.
What have other jurisdictions done? Because more often than not, somebody's already thought of this. The other thing that we do is bring in external experts. Let somebody who isn't you explain something to your audience. Even now, I bring in experts from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Taiwan, India, places that have done some of the things I already thinking about. The other space is that it's about timing, and so in some cases, you need to slow down and take time to have the conversations, take time to let people work out their issues, talk about the issues and have that space, because the imposition, alternatively what we've seen, and I'll give you a good example. So there's the catchphrase in the digital health world they love to talk about axe the fax. So the fax machine. I'm not going to assure you to know what a fax machine is. You look too young.
0:17:19 - Katy
Barely. So I understand the theory, but I have never used one. That's okay. And I don't understand why they have phone numbers. I don't know what that's about.
0:17:39 - Natasha
I think I mean I was probably being ages there making a judgment about how young you guys are.
0:17:44 - Katy
No, but it's so true, it was correct.
0:17:46 - Natasha
So it's okay.
0:17:48 - Katy
Skincare regimes are obviously very good, my SPF.
0:17:51 - Natasha
Right. So the fax machine is a quaint invention from the 19th century. It's back from the mechanics of how it works. It is a means to transmit information between two different locations. We continue to use this.
So in digital health there's this favorite saying. We're like oh, we got to axe the fax. We can't axe the fax because it is the means by which many healthcare organizations continue to move information between different spaces, different buildings. We have to do this because we don't have common standards for how information moves digitally. So if you can imagine people speaking a bunch of different languages, the messages don't move digitally, and this is a thing across all Canada, not just BC.
The fax machine therefore persists because it is the most reliable way they have of transmitting, say, a lab requisition or a medical report from one like, say, from a health authority to a community you know doctor's clinic. And when I'm talking about change and the reason why I'm talking about fax machines is that where they have said, let's axe the fax, the failure to bring healthcare providers along, you're basically messing with the way people are doing their jobs. You're asking them to change how they do their jobs and in some cases these folks have been doing their jobs and doing them well for decades. Not bringing them along has effectively scuttled initiatives around the world, notably in the United Kingdom, to get rid of the fax, simply because they did not spend enough time, as I say, changing minds.
0:19:23 - Emma
Interesting.
0:19:24 - Natasha
The technology doesn't matter, it's the people.
0:19:28 - Katy
That's such a good example and I think really illuminates something that when you talk about changing minds in public policy, there's so many different spaces in which that process is needing to happen. It's not just with the public, the people that are receiving healthcare, that are going to the doctor every day. It's also with the physicians, the healthcare practitioners, the nurses, and it's also, most likely, with other people in government. Changing minds has to happen on a lot of different levels and I expect that you need to use different communication techniques to do it on these different levels.
0:20:04 - Natasha
Absolutely. Particularly for virtual care and digital health. It intersects with every aspect of the sector, whether it's primary care, acute care, community care. It does require a completely different way of thinking about how you collaborate, how you work with people, how you build relationships, how you build champions for your work and find yourself allies and then accept the people. That maybe never might change their mind in your lifetime. But that would be the other piece about policy setting, which is sometimes without setting the table correctly. So it took another eight or ten years for the non-binary marker to be included. It took about that same time to remove all kind of medical sign off and then just the other day, I think, we just introduced legislation that will take sex marker off birth certificate. So sometimes change is incremental. It takes time recognizing the limitations of the time period you're working in or as far as people are willing to change, and just taking what you can sometimes and going with what's at and hope that somebody will pick it up later which, in this case, they did.
0:21:08 - Katy
I think that's so valuable and, at least from my perspective, I can almost see that approach as something like akin to harm reduction, where you're doing the best thing you can that will help the most people in the setting that you can, understanding the limitations and hoping that you'll be able to build on what you've already done in the future.
0:21:33 - Emma
To build on that how do you measure your success? Because evidently these timelines span years. How do you keep yourself fueled as you're going through? Where do you look for success?
0:21:46 - Natasha
Policy is a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's like an ultramarathon. Yeah, I mean it depends right, a project like the service cards. So I was one of the policy architects for the BC service card, which now every British Colombian has became the thing you use to get into restaurants. We thought about that a decade ago. There was extraordinary political support, so the policies were done in a year, the card was issued. That thing was delivered in three years. So I think part of the reality of policymaking is not only are you balancing what the evidence is telling you, so the sort of academic side of it, you're balancing it with political realities. In case of something like the services card, it wasn't actually a marathon. That thing was a sprint, but the this is a much more rare in government. More often than not it's a bit of a marathon.
0:22:36 - Katy
Yeah, you got to take the sprints when they come to you.
0:22:39 - Natasha
There's some old hands in policy that'll say that it doesn't matter how good your right or right your idea was, if the window wasn't right, if the right leadership isn't in place, it's just not going to happen. The services card is a good example of that. It actually had been attempted three times.
0:22:54 - Emma
Really.
0:22:56 - Natasha
And it wasn't because the other teams didn't do it correctly, just the stars weren't aligned
0:23:04 - Emma
That is so interesting. No, but it makes sense, and I think a lot of people who don't work in government, who don't have anything to do with policy, none of us really realize why things get done so slowly, because I feel like everybody just says, oh, government should be doing this, oh, this should be happening, oh, this person should be championing this, but they maybe don't realize that this has been tried multiple times and maybe you're right, the timing wasn't correct or the stars didn't align, and I think everyone forgets it does take a long time for these things to happen.
0:23:35 - Natasha
For sure our ability to wait for things keeps shrinking. Right, my generations among the last that remembers like not having call waiting. If a boy you really liked it was gonna call you and your sister was on the phone, it was a whole thing. I mean, I remember snail mail. You had to wait and, and I think a capacity to think about waiting doesn't really exist anymore.
We want things now and I think we also think about it in terms of the types of risks that big companies like Google or Amazon can take. They can, they can afford to take big risks. They can afford to take big losses. We're working with public funds. We have processes. So you think about our processes for budgeting, for instance, how budgets are set, how we get money from Treasury Board, how we get approval from cabinet, often before going to Treasury Board to get money. We have processes set in place to deliberately slow us down so that we are making the best possible use of public funds. So, yeah, I get it like you were like, oh, I'm gonna be doing this, and that is like we're trying to be responsible.
0:24:35 - Emma
But how are you spending your money? You know like that's fascinating. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about the challenges of your work. Let's talk about what's exciting, what really gets you going when you're at work.
0:24:47 - Natasha
One of the things that we've been been majorly focusing on in digital health and sort of leveraging the newness of it is following on the idea that, well, we don't necessarily need to replicate everything from how we used to do before, introducing ideas of cultural safety and equity into how we think about digital health.
And it's a bit of the tail wagging the dog because we are, you know, as a province, committed to reconciliation both from a legal and mandate perspective. That gets me really excited, and this sort of is picking up on the work that I did at UBC about a year ago when I was there teaching as an adjunct professor in the School of Public Policy. UBC gave me a lot of support to do research into how digital health, virtual care impacts equitable access to health care for BIPOC and marginalized populations. What we found was, yeah, in some cases this widens the divide. Using our powers of public policy to focus on, like, how do we make sure things are not just getting built for the well-heeled middle-class, more of the same, how do we make sure we're actually bringing people along meaningfully in the 21st century in a digital age? So that gets me really excited. I really get a kick out of working with my staff. I kind of have a track record of pulling people out of school once they're graduating. My staff lovingly refer to it as Natasha's policy bootcamp.
0:26:12 - Katy
But you just pluck people out and you're like mine now, mine now.
0:26:18 - Natasha
Seeing my staff get the experience, develop and then start moving along their career path and move on and move up has been really rewarding. And I think the other thing is I work with some really clever people at the Ministry of Health, people that are committed to change. People, they've got fire in the bellies. It's a real gift to have really great colleagues. Let's think about this if you work full-time, you spend more time with your colleagues and your staff than you do with anybody else in your life.
0:26:47 - Katy
So if you don't like who you're working with, that's gonna be a rough go for you, yeah, especially when you're facing challenges or phases in your work that could be demoralizing, like I expect if you're working on something that doesn't work out, doing that with people that you respect and get along with and are energized by must be so important for keeping up that excitement and that fulfillment that you find in your work.
0:27:11 - Natasha
For sure, when that's not always the case right in any work environment. But I find myself in a fortuitous place where I do have that and have really good support from my leadership as well.
0:27:22 - Katy
I want to touch a little bit on something that you mentioned, which is improving access for the most marginalized people in our society, and I mean I think all of us in this conversation know that public health policy has the biggest impact on historically marginalized groups who have faced discrimination in the medical system or who have fallen through the cracks. I'm wondering if there's anything in your career that you're particularly proud of when it comes to advancing equity through public health policy.
0:27:51 - Natasha
That's a good question. The transgender one was a huge victory for me. I remember feeling kind of terrified at the time because people like, oh, people wait a whole career for this and you already got yours. And then I was like what's gonna happen to me after this and like not helpful.
0:28:03 - Katy
Don't say that. Like this is not uplifting.
0:28:06 - Natasha
Thank you. That one was really awesome and you know, honestly, in that case the registrar for the BC vital statistics then took that policy to the rest of Canada and so nine other provinces and territories moved with us on what we did. That was awesome. More recently, I wrote a policy on culturally safe virtual care and it talks about how do we think about designing services and systems and co-designing it, and I focus on Indigenous people in this policy. How do we do that? And then, Emma you had a good question earlier that I kind of half answered. But I'll start answering a bit more now.
The third realm of that policy is evaluation. If you're gonna evaluate in this space, the only people that can tell you something was culturally safe was the actual recipient of the services themselves and how you think about getting this opinion from them, particularly when folks find it so hard to find a doctor and such. Gonna have to do that in a safe manner where they're not gonna fear retribution or anything like that. And the feedback, again, it should not be used in a retributive way, but it's just like okay, how can we help you be a little less. Hmm, I don't know a little less racist? I mean, that's the blunt point of that policy, right, absolutely yeah. And for that latter policy, my team and I recently won the Ministry Award for embodying innovation, so that was really nice to be recognized.
0:29:28 - Katy
Congratulations. That's so awesome.
0:29:30 - Natasha
It is awesome. Yeah it was really rewarding to get that, it was super nice.
Well done. So I guess that's another way of measuring success. You're getting recognized. That's nice too, but I think more seriously. Just I want to close the loop on your question about how do you measure success. Evaluation is a really key part. What you do is policymakers, and so we do have what we call a common evaluation framework, and you do that before you start implementing. You don't do this after you've done it. You'd be surprised after that happens, actually, but it does introduce methodological issues. So one of the other things I'd say to humanities students is I do know that they tend to shy away from the quantitative. I say embrace the quantitative. It is a powerful tool to complement qualitative analysis and data-driven analysis where it's possible.
0:30:18 - Katy
It's critical. In the same vein, you've had so many successes and are having recognition for those. I think it's especially incredible when your work is recognized not only by those within the province, but by having other jurisdictions adopt a policy that you have worked on here in BC. Looking forward and I'm sure you have a lot of answers to this, what would you like to see change and develop in digital health policy in the next several years?
0:30:49 - Natasha
I'd like to see an environment that is much more inclusive and welcoming of women. I'd like to see that change. I think, too, in the IMIT world. Technology is a handmaiden. It serves people. We don't serve it. What I see quite frequently is a real focus on technical functionality. It can do this and it can do that. For example, in the news you're probably seeing that they've now created AI that can write reports that scientists read, and they can't tell whether a scientist wrote it or AI wrote it. Okay, that's great. What was the point of creating an AI that could do that? Rather than asking ourselves questions like what sort of society do we want? What do we need technology to be doing for us? This incredible itch that needs to be scratched, where we just keep racing ahead in this weird linear fashion. It's like, well, that's awesome, but there's a whole chunk of the province that still struggles to get clean drinking water.
0:31:46 - Katy
Yeah, it's like that is great, but can people on the streets get their vaccinations?
0:31:50 - Natasha
Yeah, is it feeding people? Is it equitably distributing resources? All the technology is fine but at the end of the day, if it isn't solving real issues that we have right now, for all the technology we have, we have health records that are scattered and styled across the province, and this is the case for every region of Canada. But again, it was technology that was built for its own sake and not with an overarching purpose in mind, which is not only healthcare providers, but people would want to see that end to end health records. So how did we get here? So I'd like to see that change. And then I think, in terms of the third dimension here, individual health and virtual care do offer opportunities to improve health.
Culturally safe healthcare is, and I think the other thing I'd really like to see change is that, if we think about this from a population health perspective, Indigenous people, for historical reasons and for continuing issues in the post-colonial world, continue to bear disproportionately the brunt of chronic disease, for instance, and other issues. Our prisons have disproportionate representation with Indigenous. If you're going to tell me there isn't a link between historical trauma, your state of your health and whether or not you're likely to end up on the wrong side of the line, like that's just wild. Of course it's all connected. What I would like to see change is that we think about it from that perspective and we really earnestly start designing services across the spectrum, not just health, that are going to move the needle on that.
0:33:24 - Emma
Those are some amazing things that hopefully maybe we'll see in our lifetime. I hope so. I'm optimistic. Well, we're lucky that really amazing people like you are working on these things.
0:33:34 - Natasha
That's very kind of you. I'm just one, though I think there's some very amazing people out there, very lucky to be working with some strong allies.
0:33:43 - Katy
You've talked a lot about the people you work with and with your team, and how gratifying it is for you to be able to act as a mentor for a lot of the people that you work with. What would you say to a student who is interested in working in public health policy? What do you wish that you had known when you were starting your career?
0:34:02 - Natasha
Early on in your career. Take advantage of one of the nicest perks the public service has to offer, which is changing specialization without penalty. Meaning if you worked in the private sector, you invest. You invest in your plumber now. If you wanted to change and become an electrician, you got to reset and start all over again.
In the public sector. If you want to work in the natural resource sector, you can. If you want to move and now work in justice, you could. You want to work in the social sector, so that could be children and families, health, social development. You can do that. Try out different things early in your career, because it's kind of like going to university. I'm not sure the public school system really prepares one for the kinds of choice you're presented with when you get to university. I remember thinking that, yeah, I would agree.
0:34:51 - Katy
I remember getting to university and realizing how many subjects there are in the humanities that fully no one talks to you about until you are there in school and you're like what is anthropology? I have never heard of her philosophy, whomst, I don't know, but I think that this piece of advice you've given really speaks to a theme that I've been seeing in this conversation, which is that in public policy and in public service, nothing is isolated. Everything ties together, and so these skills that an early career public servant would be learning in one area, my guess is that they would bring all that experience and that knowledge no matter where they go.
0:35:28 - Natasha
Yes, I agree with you. I think the other side of it, too, is you're looking to get super rich, you're going to get really upset and you go work for the public service. That being said, if you believe in community service, this is a way to give back. If you want a pretty awesome pension plan that is the envy of many others, if you want a really sweet benefits package, which typically represents another 30% of your salary, if you want opportunities for continuous learning, we actually have a scholarship fund for folks who want to go back to schools called Pacific Leaders. I got my third degree, by the way, the Master of Science that you mentioned I did that while I was still working in the public service. I was funded by that, fully funded.
There are lots of really cool aspects of working in the public service. Thinking about things I want to know take the time to get your experience. I think a lot of people really focus on that vertical ascent, the really fast vertical ascent, and for some, yeah, that totally is the case. But I think focusing on making sure you've got that right experience before you rise to leadership positions and that incremental experience is really critical, because for those that do rise super fast. There's things that you just can't learn it from a book, you can't cram it in, it's just the experience that time gives you If you're interested in rising the public service, part of that finding the right bosses, getting that right mentorship, learning things is really critical. So enjoying the journey, I think, is the other piece.
0:37:00 - Katy
I love that advice.
0:37:01 - Natasha
I think that's great advice.
0:37:03 - Katy
I just wanted to take the opportunity, Natasha, you mentioned your Master of Science and I wanted to sort of take a moment to talk about your academic journey. After you had begun your career, you'd been working in public service. What prompted you to decide to go back to school and pursue your master of science, and what role did that play in your career journey?
0:37:24 - Natasha
I had just been thinking about it for a while. I mean, you could draw a line between yes, I was working in the Ministry of Health when I first started this. I finished the degree while I was at Treasury Board, but I think also I felt like it was time to flex the side of my brain that likes science. So I did the degree. It's been really helpful in terms of reinforcing my quantitative skills, so like thinking about the importance of statistical analysis. I'm surprised how often we use linear regressions for the purpose of doing policy. So I think it has been really helpful. In terms of the current job I do. But I think, more broadly, the degree specializes in environmental health, so it does have application across other sectors. And I also think I was starting to get nostalgic and I missed school too. I love school, it's fun, the energy, you're meeting interesting people. So I think there's a part of me that likes being an academic or involved at least in academics.
0:38:18 - Katy
I really relate to that. I mean, I introduced myself at the top of this episode as a recent graduate and already I feel it. I already miss school, so I really get that and I think there's something to be said for taking advantage of education for its own sake, beyond what it can translate into economically.
0:38:38 - Natasha
Yes, I agree. I think often there's this whole thing about oh well, what was the content of your education? Or like, what was the subject matter? I think as you progress through your career you're going to find, generally speaking unless you're like looking for accounting designations and that sort of thing people care less about what the content was and more about what skills did you get from it? What kind of lenses do you have now to bring with you when you're looking at the application towards problem solving, that sort of thing?
0:39:06 - Katy
Absolutely, because nobody wants to pay me to analyze post-colonial Irish poetry. Somehow I haven't found that on a job posting yet. Yeah, crazy.
0:39:15 - Natasha
That's totally crazy, I know. I remember talking to my boss, the department head, at UBC a year ago. She asked me what the biggest difference was between this and working in the public service and I said just the sheer amount of time you have to think about things. Yes, you have space to think. That's such a gift. She looked a little gobsmacked.
0:39:34 - Katy
It's such a good point and I think that that was the biggest challenge about transitioning from especially graduate school into full-time work was feeling like things moved much more quickly and missing that space to really obsess over things.
0:39:51 - Natasha
You know. I love that you said that. That's something I noticed about everyone that comes to work for me straight out of school is they get really stressed out because they're worried the work isn't perfect enough. And it doesn't matter how many times I tell them the perfection's the enemy of the good and the boat's leaving and you can either get on the boat or not be on the boat. Once they start seeing, oh okay, it didn't have to be completely super perfect. From an academic perspective, I think that tends to sort of offset that over time. But that would be another piece of advice that would give people that are joining.
0:40:26 - Emma
All right, folks, we are entering the rapid fire portion of our segment today and, as you may already know, rapid fire questions are for Natasha to answer. They don't have to be short answers, they just have to be whatever comes first to your mind when we ask you the question. All right, let's dive right in with question one. If you could go back to school today and study anything that you wanted in the entire world, what would you choose?
0:40:57 - Natasha
Bioethics.
0:40:59 - Katy
Love that. I know nothing about science and that sounds fascinating to me.
0:41:01 - Natasha
That might be the PhD idea guys.
0:41:03 - Katy
I think that's great. Vision boarding your PhD.
0:41:06 - Natasha
I am totally vision boarding this thing.
0:41:09 - Katy
I love that.
0:41:10 - Natasha
Yeah.
0:41:11 - Katy
Yeah, all righty number two what are you reading, watching or listening to right now?
0:41:17 - Natasha
Oh, my goodness, okay fun. I usually got a couple books in the go, but right now I'm reading the Devil's Atlas. Highly recommends it's basically telling of how different cultures see the afterlife and is full of pictures as well. So it's wild, super fun read. Learning that there used to be a God called Mazda. I was like Mazda, did you name your car for this? And then what am I watching? I'm watching Your Honor. Brian Cranston is just masterful. Listening, Michelle Reben, who worked with Matty Matheson. I don't know if you guys know Matty, the Canadian cook. I sure do. She's kind of like a taste maker. I guess she's got a great playlist on Spotify called holiday dinner party. Go check it out. It's great. It's a very chill list. You'll love it, trust me.
0:42:09 - Katy
I love that. Well, my friend group is always doing some potluck or other, and so that will definitely be playing at the next one. Yeah, it's a winner.
0:42:18 - Natasha
My friends love it.
0:42:20 - Emma
That's awesome. Okay, what's one tip you have for someone applying for an entry level job with your team?
0:42:28 - Natasha
Always call the hiring manager. Do this for your entire career. Call them. Go Google and find a list of questions you ask your prospective employer. It's you interviewing them before they interview you. It helps imprint you in their mind. So then when they see your resume and a pile of resumes, they're like, oh, that Emma girl or that Katy person. Right, they talked to me and I got to see their little face and okay, that's key. Do this for every job you ever apply for between now and the time you retire.
The other piece I would say is, if you're applying to the public service, go read our techniques for interviewing. So the star technique figure out how to do a competency based interview. The public service has done a ton of videos and things on this. There's no mystery about a public service interview. And then the last piece I would say is get people to help you with your resume. I don't think anybody likes doing a resume, it's just painful. So if you're thinking about your resume, I would generally say, when you talk about a job you did, structured in terms of what you were accountable for, so like, what did they hire you to do? And then write what you actually delivered on and what the result was. It really kind of changes the way people read your resume.
0:43:43 - Emma
That's great advice. Gonna take that forward with me for sure.
0:43:47 - Katy
Yeah, Emma's like. I am taking notes.
0:43:51 - Emma
No, actually I am. You can see my notepad.
0:43:54 - Katy
Oh, you're so organized.
0:43:56 - Natasha
Wow, very impressive. Emma's on it.
0:43:59 - Katy
Alrighty, hypothetical situation. It's a long, busy day, it's the end of the day, you're exhausted. What drink or snack gets you through?
0:44:10 - Natasha
I feel like I should tell you that I drink kombucha and half a plate of crudite. That's a lie. A dry gin, martini and Miss Vickies chips, the regular ones.
0:44:23 - Katy
Yes, what is your Miss Vicky's flavor of choice? It's gotta be the plain ones. Love them. Just. The amount of crunch in a Miss Vicky's chip cannot be replicated by any other chip.
0:44:33 - Natasha
And I've tried all the American potato chips.
0:44:35 - Emma
They don't compare.
0:44:36 - Natasha
They don't compare, it's just neutral. You don't have to think about it, you're not getting stuff on your fingers.
0:44:40 - Katy
And not getting stuff on your fingers is very important when it is a snack, fueling your workday, because you don't want a gross keyboard. Nobody wants that.
0:44:48 - Emma
Couldn't agree more. Actually, I gotta say it was revolutionary to me when I saw someone online using chopsticks to eat Cheetos. I've never eaten Cheetos the same way again I have to use chopsticks now. It works so well.
0:45:02 - Katy
Anyway, alright, I think we just have one more.
0:45:06 - Emma
Yep, we're coming to the end here. What is your favorite job interview question to answer or ask?
0:45:14 - Natasha
I like people telling me about a time they've had a conflict.
0:45:18 - Emma
I hate answering that one, but it's good.
0:45:21 - Natasha
Yeah, it tells you a lot in terms of what they choose to tell you, how they frame it, because it's not that I care that they've had a conflict. I want to know how they approach and think about conflict because, particularly if you do the type of work I do, a conflict just it happens. It horrifies my staff a little bit, but I love to do this right at the end because I always give people the questions ahead of time. I think it's just weak not to, because I wouldn't just throw something at you and tell you to do it right away at work.
0:45:48 - Katy
It's not a pop quiz, yeah.
0:45:51 - Natasha
But what I do like to do is, at the end of the interview, I'll say to them there's actually another question I'm not going to mark you on it and from the point in which I finished saying the question, you'll have 30 seconds to answer it. And then I'll do something like what's 59 times 73? Or I'll say like what's the capital of Azerbaijan? And like it's really interesting to see how people react.
0:46:17 - Emma
Do you get a lot of big eyes, the fear.
0:46:21 - Natasha
Yeah, you know when you get all kinds of reactions. In the case of the mathematics one, you know one person like just pulls out a paper and starts doing long form calculation. Another person, yeah, big eyes. Another person was like can I use my phone? I'm like, yeah, go ahead. So in some cases it's a really negative reaction, like almost ragey and I'm like no dude.
0:46:45 - Katy
Well, of those two examples, I definitely be more scared of the capital question than of the math, because with the math I'm like I think I know how to multiply with the capital of Azerbaijan. I'm like I've never known that and it's not anywhere in my brain for me to look for it.
0:47:00 - Natasha
See, that's what they do, whereas, like I haven't put any restriction on how they answer me, you can pull your phone out.
0:47:06 - Katy
Yeah, you're like look it up.
0:47:09 - Natasha
Because that's what you would do, right? Yeah, that's actually another thing I teach the people that work for me, which is it's okay to say I don't know the answer, but I can go look into this for you. When do you need it back? What we don't want are people that are afraid to say that they don't know and then just tell us something. That isn't right, yeah.
0:47:26 - Katy
I think that's such a mic drop piece of advice to wrap up on.
0:47:29 - Emma
Thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing all of your amazing wisdom and knowledge and your whole journey. This was so insightful.
0:47:39 - Katy
It was so great.
0:47:39 - Emma
Thank you.
0:47:41 - Natasha
This was really fun. Those were great questions.
0:47:44 - Katy
I had such a blast. I feel like as a young person just on the early phases of my career, even though I'm not in the public service. I feel like I really learned a lot just from talking with you, so I want to thank you for your time and your expertise. Thank you.
0:47:57 - Natasha
Thank you for honoring me by inviting me here today. It's super nice.
0:48:02 - Katy
Work. It is developed and distributed by Co-op and Career Services at the University of Victoria. The podcast is hosted by Katy DeCoste and Emma Ulveland and produced by Katie, Emma and Joy Poliquin. Today's guest was Natasha Thambirajah. Our theme music and art were created by Emma Ulveland, with audio editing by Emma Ulveland. If you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe and you'll never miss an update. To learn more about career possibilities and resources from UVic, visit UVic dot.ca.
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