In the Spotlight: Dave Mazerolle – A Community Builder at Nordia, and Beyond
The Spotlight column, created to mark our 25th anniversary, highlights the individuals behind Nordia's success. This month, to celebrate the end of our 2024 United Way campaign, we bring you David Mazerolle aka Dave, Director of Operations at Nordia, but above all an active and involved member of the community.
As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, I am reflecting on my career journey and I am trying to remember what I was doing when Nordia was first founded. So much had happened in the last quarter of a century. Looking back, I recognize that a handful of events and experiences have shaped me into who I am today. And one of them is when I first became a volunteer for Centraide United Way. 25 years ago, a younger version of myself was pushing the doors of Centraide and had no idea that it would end up having such a lasting impact on my life. I had never volunteered for a charity before, so I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that I was going to help others in need and that the most I could ‘lose’ from it, was my time.
Back then, Centraide was developing a business management program for those who were unemployed and looking into becoming entrepreneurs. The training curriculum included accounting, marketing, and the basics of customer relations. I had been working in the customer experience field for nearly 10 years, and I understood first-hand how critical it was for the long-term success of any business. I volunteered as a facilitator and gave customer service training classes during my personal time, over the course of several months.
It was such a fulfilling experience. I remember my first time teaching the basics of customer relations to a small group of aspiring entrepreneurs. These individuals had lost their jobs, were in a difficult situation, and were counting on me to give them some of the tools they needed to get back on their feet. I wanted to make sure they could get the most out of my training classes, so I invested myself into delivering the program as best as I could. I had signed up to give away my expertise for free without expecting anything in return, only to come out of it feeling like I had deepened my knowledge of customer experience, and without realizing, that I had gained some skills that would later help springboard my career as a leader. As they say, if you really want to master something, then teach it!
When you volunteer to support a charity, you get to contribute to something that is bigger than yourself. You also get to discover the power of an active and united community. When people come together and work hand-in-hand for the greater good of all, there’s an invisible driving force that helps us achieve even the hardest things.
“That sense of belonging that we often find in the community sector can also be replicated in the corporate world.”
Any team leader will tell you: one of the most difficult parts of our job is to create and maintain team cohesion. How to keep a group of individuals feel connected and driven to achieve a common goal? Through unity. That sense of belonging that we often find in the community sector can also be replicated in the corporate world.
I have never pictured myself as a lifer, yet it's been 10 years since I joined Nordia. As the years go by, here too, charity work plays an increasingly important role in my life. At Nordia, we have been supporting local communities through various charities, including Centraide. Being involved in charity work as a team has been a good way of creating a real community at the heart of Nordia. We have gone through tremendous growth in the last decade and as technology is now transforming the CX industry, I believe that the team engagement skills that we have gained through our volunteering work is going to help us maintain unity and succeed.
Val, Emily and Dave from the Moncton teams donating to The Humanity Project association
I've been lucky enough to meet some incredible people at Nordia, with whom I've worked for years, and who joined me on many charity initiatives. The least I can say is that my colleagues, are very generous individuals. I like to say that I strike the match, but it's really they who lit the fire.
Today, 25 years after I first walked through the doors of Centraide, I'm still as committed as ever to help others and I am happy to see that we can make a difference together as a team. Everyone has something to contribute to the community, you just have to find the flame that ignites you, and bring it closer to the flame of others to make it grow and light up the path for the changes that you would like to see, or for the goals you’d like to achieve.