Vaughan woman who goes extra mile bestowed with Governor General's Caring Canadian Award

YorkRegion.com
Feb. 26, 2015
Adam Martin-Robbins

Damindra Dias hears a lot of heartbreaking stories as a volunteer working with people struggling to find employment, but the many success stories she encounters lift her spirits and spur her on.

For more than a decade, the longtime Woodbridge resident has helped unemployed professionals, new immigrants and young graduates crack into the workforce.

In 2002, after more than two decades as a top executive with Kellogg’s and Coca-Cola, she launched a not-for-profit, career-counselling firm aimed at helping minorities and professionals who’ve lost their jobs.

Then, in 2004, Dias started volunteering at the Progress Career Planning Institute, a Toronto-based non-profit agency, where she conducts workshops and provides career coaching, mentoring as well as helps with resume writing and job interview techniques.

Dias loves the work and gets a special thrill out of the notes clients send her.

“When I get that email: DiDi I got the job. DiDi I got an interview. DiDi can you coach me please?” Dias said beaming as she recalls some of her favourite missives from the people she’s helped to find work.

Dias’s dedication and passion garnered her a Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award 2014, which was presented to her earlier this month during a special ceremony in Toronto.

Dias said she’s “thrilled and humbled” by the award and hopes to inspire others to follow in her footsteps.

By all accounts, she sets the bar pretty high.

Silma Roddau, president of the Progress Career Planning Institute, has known Dias for more than a decade.

“I’ve worked with other volunteers, but she is quite unique in that Damindra goes the extra mile,” Roddau said. “She comes in, she does a workshop for us, but the job doesn’t end there. She takes it home. She follows up with the individuals — on her own time. At home, on the weekends, she’s communicating (with clients) and I know that because I’m (copied) on a lot of the emails.”

It’s not uncommon for Dias to work all day without taking a lunch break, Roddau said. And there are often evenings when she has to urge Dias to go home.

“That’s the kind of person that she is,” Roddau said.  “We close at 4:30 p.m. I’m the president of the organization so usually I stay back a bit later and she’s here with me.”

Dias also strives to improve the way things are done, she added.

“She’s always coming up with new ideas,” Roddau said. “She’s an amazing person."

Dias credits her experiences at Kellogg’s and Coca Cola with shaping her approach to her volunteer work.

“They’re cultures are very different, but they both had one thing in common, employees come first,” she said, noting both firms offered workers extensive education and training programs. “Career success is purely your dedication, your intelligence, your hard work plus a great mentor.”

Dias, who was born and raised in Sri Lanka, faced an uphill battle finding employment when she came to Canada from England in the 1970s after her husband, Shelton, landed a teaching job at the University of Guelph.

Shortly after arriving, Dias went to meet with her husband’s boss. 

“He said, ‘Your resume is very impressive, but you have no Canadian experience,’” Dias recalled. “’Listen,’ he said. ‘Take the lowest level position you can get in your field and you won’t go wrong. If you’re as good as you say you are, sooner or later someone is going to recognize you.’”

Dias took his advice and applied for a junior accounts payable clerk at a local firm.

She was told during the interview that her resume was impressive, but she lacked Canadian experience.

At that point, Dias said, she lost her cool and told the woman interviewing her that unless someone had the courage to give her a shot she’d never get any Canadian experience.

A short time later, the woman called and offered Dias the job.  

Within three months, she was climbing up the ranks of the company.

“That’s what convinced me, your sex doesn’t matter, your colour doesn’t matter, if you’re good you get recognized,” she said. “That’s the message I give everybody today.”

From there Dias went on to work at Kellogg’s Canada as a senior accountant.

She was promoted to finance manager then controller and eventually offered the chance spearhead Kellogg’s foray into India, a challenge she thrived at for five years.

After 18 years with Kellogg’s, Dias took a job with Coca-Cola where she stayed for six years.

It was during the last two years of her time there, while working in Atlanta, that Dias was inspired to help people struggling to find work

The dot-com bubble had burst leading to mass layoffs of highly educated professionals, especially in Canada at firms such as Nortel and Celestica.

At the time, Dias was flying home to Toronto every weekend.

“During my flight, at the airport, when I’m going out for dinners, all I would hear is Nortel, Nortel, Nortel,” she recalled. “Everywhere I go, I would see these people who were laid off at Nortel.”

She met a former Nortel employee who told her he’d walked into the company’s offices after graduating university and after brief interview was hired on the spot.

He’d never written a resume or worked anywhere else. He was completely lost.

“That was a real big eye-opener for me,” Dias said.

Dias felt compelled to put her knowledge and experience to work helping others.

So she started her own career-counselling agency, Career Plus.

“At a certain period there are different things that become a priority. Money is not everything and you have to give back to society one way or the other,” she said.

Early on, Dias had a very memorable encounter with a young woman who has a master’s degree in anthropology, but was working as a parking lot attendant.

After speaking to her, Dias felt “something is not ticking here.”

Eventually, the woman opened up to Dias about having been jailed for six years in Ethiopia and the trauma she endured while in prison, including being raped every day. 

The psychological scars left by that experience were holding her back. She wasn’t able to go into a job interview with a man with confidence, Dias said.

“We worked and we worked and we worked. And she got a job in her field,” Dias said. “The note she sent me was unbelievable.”