Nancy Bush

Nancy Bush is a veteran in her field. Working with the university since 1982, she has seen the ins and outs of the post secondary atmosphere. Nancy wasn’t always an event planner; she started dabbling in planning when she worked for the public affairs office. There, she managed a program for journalists who came to the university, and she often had to plan travel and small meetings for them. She heard about an opening at the Office of Continuing Education and Professional Development through the grapevine and joined up to manage the End-of-Life Care Program. Ten years later Nancy is still with us and has her job down to a science. “Very well organized,” she says of what a person needs to make a good event planner. “If you don’t your ducks in a row the event won’t go smoothly and the clients on both ends won’t be happy. You need to be creative in situations where there are financial and personal pressures and you need to enjoy working with a variety of people.”

Nancy’s favourite thing about her job is the sense of accomplishment and learning.

“Working with a variety of people and getting to know a little bit about a lot of things, that’s the best,” she says. “At the end of the day, at a good event, you have a feeling that you’ve accomplished something.”

There are a lot of ups and downs that come with planning large events and Nancy says the hardest thing is juggling events in different stages.

“Balancing competing events that are in different stages is the hardest thing. Each program needs your attention in different ways,” she explains.

A knack for juggling is what got Nancy through one particularly rough day. An event happening at Women’s College Hospital had all their course materials disappear and at the same time another group showed up for the same space and refused to leave. Nancy had to defend her event space while also tracking down the course materials as registrants were coming through the door. Things fell into place and the event was a success, all thanks to the talented event planner that Nancy is.