Sinead Bovell (BBA ’11) was on a solid career path – she’d graduated from Laurier, earned an MBA at University of Toronto and had landed a management consulting job. On the side, she was also working on an entrepreneurial venture with colleagues she’d met at business school.
“But I was having those recurring feelings that maybe I’m in the wrong lane,” she says.
At a business event for notable young entrepreneurs in Toronto, she was approached by someone who asked if she modelled. “It wasn’t even something I’d remotely considered,” she says. “I’d always thought my only options were business, medicine or law.”
The person who approached her was a scout. “I just said, let’s explore this opportunity. I was balancing photoshoots and school and it just started to really take off.”
In her first year of modelling, Sinead appeared in Elle and Chatelaine magazines, a campaign for Chapters/Indigo and Joe Fresh. And she was faced with a conundrum: Take the leap full time into modelling or focus on her job as a management consultant.
“It was terrifying. I talked about it with everyone I knew 700 times about it.”
Sinead opted to leave her job and move to New York City to pursue her modelling career. She continues to work on her startup and brings a business savvy approach to her new career as well, running a blog that offers advice for young entrepreneurs. “I always think, how can I market myself, what is my competitive advantage?”
Here she offers a few tips for other business grads who are considering making that leap into a creative field:
1. Leverage your business knowledge and background to make yourself stand out from the crowd. “We learn from business is what sets you apart is your key competitive advantage. If you’re going to operate in an intersection where nobody else does it will accelerate you in what you’re trying to do, so if you have a drumming skill but also a marketing degree, that’s a really unique intersection point. Just know you can leverage your past life to accelerate the steps into your new career.”
2. Ignore age and arbitrary numbers. “That’s something we usually put as a blanket for why we can’t go after goals. People will say ‘if I make a career move, I won’t make this goal by this age, but that’s just arbitrary numbers we put in our heads that really block us from taking on opportunities. I started modelling at 25 and the average age is 19. It hasn’t held me back at all.”
3. Trust it will work out. “So often we keep rolling in our comfort zone, but if you have a calling somewhere else eventually you’re going to have to cut the cord and make the decision and just leap. It’s never going to feel like the right time so just leap.”