BHE Spotlight: Sonja Zours

I was chatting with a family member about making a career change to the environmental field and my hopes to re-plant roots in Northern Ontario. She put me in touch with Linda for an informal chat to get insight into the industry.

After a great discussion about the field and Blue Heron Environmental, the opportunity presented itself to leverage my previous skillset and join the team. It was a fortunate cascade of events!

It’s still early days for me in this role but it’s letting me tap into the experience I have in program management and process development.

There’s something very satisfying about setting up a program or process for clients that is practical and can be easily followed and maintained.

I think there can be a misconception that individuals in this type of role don’t understand how things work in reality, just on paper.

A good management systems specialist will take the time to get out into the field or on the production floor to see and understand operations and the challenges faced. They collaborate with impacted teams and stakeholders to make sure that the written programs and processes are developed to ensure a client is compliant to regulations, but that they are also user-friendly for those responsible for carrying out the activities.

My very first job was working on-and-off as a student for an inventory company, but my first full-time job was as a quality assurance auditor at a meat product manufacturer. A memorable part of this job was the daily morning quality control meetings, which included tasting all items in production.

By 9am that could be around 20 items varying from salami to smoked sausages. It took getting used to but eventually everyone on the team craved that early morning salt fix... lol.