Karen Erickson has a lot of people to thank for help getting her career to where it is today.
Erickson is the regional director of the Okanagan Investors Group, and she said without the support of her family, church and staff she never would have reached that point.
Erickson has been with Investors Group for 17 years, working in a myriad of roles in that time. After beginning as a marketing and sales assistant, she moved into a financial advisor role. The following year, 2007, she added Certified Financial Planning (CFP) and Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) designations to her resume, helping to propel her to become a division director in 2009.
Erickson worked in that role for five years before being named regional director in January 2014.
Erickson’s 17 years of experience in her chosen field have given her many lessons to draw from, and she described a few of them.
“I think that perseverance is something that’s overlooked,” Erickson said. “When you’re in an entrepreneurial role you get the risks and the rewards and you need to have integrity, you need a vision of what you want to do, you have to be tenacious and you have to have lots of perseverance to get through it. Being a business owner goes through its ups and downs, but you’ve got to push through and get on to that next goal. For my career to keep progressing, I had to want it and have a vision for getting it.”
Many entrepreneurs, particularly those with children, often find it hard to achieve balance between work and family in their lives.
Erickson said she has found that balance, and encouraged others to find a way to be able to attain it. For her, the path lead through being an entrepreneur.
Erickson said being self-employed not only gave her time to both be a mother and focus on her career, but it also allowed her time to volunteer and give back to her community.
Part of Erickson’s current role is to hire new staff, and she offered some tips for applicants looking for work in the financial planning field.
“You’re looking for somebody who is excellent at customer service, somebody who cares about people and wants to help people,” she described.
“In the end, our business of financial planning is a very caring and service oriented business. So we’ve got to establish what our clients need, and we need to figure out what to do to get them there.”
Erickson never anticipated getting a CFP, and she stressed it’s important to consider and explore careers you’ve never given much thought to before because one of them could end up being the perfect job for you.
Erickson has found that ideal career, and in addition to providing her with balance in her life she has also seen growth in a number of skills she never anticipated developing. Those areas include public speaking, presenting and facilitating, and creating contests to motivate people to get excited to do their job.
For many years, Erickson has been involved with promoting women in business. She wants to inspire women to know they can make it in business if they simply put their minds to it.
She noted it’s great to have a mentor to help you succeed, and she would love to see women band together to help each other reach leadership roles and succeed in them.
Finally, she added it’s important to embrace change rather than resist it, as change is going to happen and it’s best to use it to your advantage.
Erickson’s career success and dedication to helping other women see similar career progressions are what make her a Woman to Watch.
Crowe MacKay’s Women to Watch program is a weekly feature that profiles remarkable women in our community. This feature series is a joint initiative between Crowe MacKay, the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and the Kelowna Capital News. To nominate the exceptional woman in your life, email womentowatch@kelownachamber.org.
