How a retiring baby boomer like you can create a personal life-transition plan.

You can begin by taking our “bite-size” course called Life’s Next Steps — The Essentials.

It is a workbook and video tutorial with Suzanne Armstrong explaining your steps to success.

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Upcoming Workshops


Free Mini-Workshops


Workshop Leaders

Janet Dey
Leader

Janet Dey has led her own strategic management consulting practice since 2000, focusing on real property policy and risk management, organizational reviews and the public-private sector interface. She also engages seriously in her work as a fibre and textile artist, and enjoys the balance! Janet is respected for her leadership of the teams required to accomplish successful, creative and innovative outcomes in different regulatory and economic climates.

Janet achieved a depth of expertise in complex real property matters as Executive Vice President of Wittington Properties Ltd., and the executive responsible for the CBC’s Broadcast Centre project. Clients since starting her own firm have included Trent University, the Ontario government, the Treasury Board Secretariat, a number of Ontario municipalities and not-for-profit organizations. Facilitation and coaching have been an integral part of her practice.

Through her time with Wittington, Janet taught real estate in the York University MBA Real Property Program, and has always considered working with students a highlight. Volunteer work has included the Boards of Governors of Sheridan College, Textile Museum and Factory Theatre; and currently includes working with the aboriginal community through CESO/SACO.


Linda Padfield
Leader

Linda manages her own small business as an organizational development consultant. She has over 30 years of experience in the business world, helping leaders manage change. She brings her insights into why and how some people thrive in a changing environment to her work as a facilitator for Life’s Next Steps, after experiencing the benefits of the program for her own life planning.

Linda retired in 2007 from Vale Inco where she was the Director of Organizational Development, responsible for ensuring that Inco had the leaders it needed globally through executive recruiting, succession management, management development, leadership coaching and organizational design initiatives. Prior to joining Inco, she had done similar work with the Hay Group and The Mutual Group (TMG), now owned by SunLife. Linda’s earlier career was as an operations manager with Bell Canada. She was one of the first women in non-traditional roles, managing installation crews and buried wire. One of her proudest accomplishments during that time was learning how to spur a pole.

Alexander J Szerenyi

Alexander J. Szerenyi
Leader

Alex has over 25 years of experience in the financial services sector where he held a number of senior management positions.

During the past 15 years, Alex has worked as a facilitator and independent consultant. He has delivered workshops in the financial, manufacturing, biotech, service and industrial sectors. Some of the topics he covered included management and leadership development, coaching, sales training, customer service, presentation skills, train-the-trainer seminars and conference facilitation. He has also consulted with clients on leadership, and has facilitated international conferences in Brazil and Poland.

Alex brings high energy to his training sessions along with humour, real-life stories and common sense. He has a passion for continuous learning and believes that all training should be learner-focused, while using his boundless enthusiasm to ensure clients’ needs are exceeded.

Alex lives by the motto “Believe in yourself and good things will happen to you.”

Caroline Thornton

Caroline Thornton
Leader

Caroline Thornton is the founder and president of NADUM Inc., a company that specializes in facilitation services. Caroline built the company and has completed assignments in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Europe and Singapore. She worked with Fortune 100 companies such as McDonalds, Imperial Oil, TD Bank and McCain Foods. With the NADUM Associates, she has designed and led sessions with participants from as few as four people to groups of over 200. In addition to developing and leading a wide range of facilitated events, Caroline has also designed and delivered training courses in the area of facilitation and communication.

One of the courses designed at NADUM is called the “Life Plan” and is very similar to the Life’s Next Steps program in that this course is an enabler for people who are in transition. Many of the people who have completed the Life Plan have described it as a “life changing event.” Caroline completed her own “Life Plan” for the first time in 1990 and since then has revised and fine-tuned the Plan to bring her to her current world.

In 2005, she and her husband Ken, who is an accountant and an entrepreneur (no, this is not an oxymoron!), decided to start a completely new business. Although both of them have business backgrounds, they elected to begin a farming operation. They conducted extensive research and then set out to build a state-of-the-art facility to breed, raise and race standardbreds. Today, they own 28 horses including nine pregnant broodmares, yearlings, foals and racehorses. This is a field in which neither of them had experience, credentials or expertise. It is also the opportunity to live their dream and create something magical together.

Caroline is thrilled to be a facilitator with Life’s Next Steps and is looking forward to enabling other people to find their dream and then go out and make it real.