Once transition is in full swing, important decisions are made that will guide you towards your future career. With Game Plan, these important decisions can be looked at and thought through to make sure they are in line with your needs.

To gain a better understanding of these steps during transition, we spoke with Evert McLaughlin, a national team sailing athlete in the Laser class who competed for five years internationally, attending the Worlds from 2013-2016 and competing in the 2015 Pan-Am Games in the Snipe class. He walked us through the different steps he took to make his transition as painless as possible. In this three part blog series, we will walk through Evert’s journey from competing to the workforce and dive deeper on the different steps he took to ensure a successful transition.

Once Evert had embarked on his transition, he began exploring options that might be best for him. “I had done a lot of research into an engineering masters”, he said, “I was going to look into the tuition reimbursement program, but I wanted to pivot away from engineering towards some analytics work.” At this time in the Fall 2016, Evert attended the Game Plan Summit where he saw the Smith School of Business booth and learned about the partnership. Once the booth cleared out, he went over to learn more about the finance side of analytics.

“I went over with questions about an MBA or a Master in Finance, but after talking to them about my interests and some of my human skills, the Master in Management Analytics program they offered was better suited to my needs and aspiration.”

Evert then began to build out his application package with the help of Rolf, his Game Plan Advisor in Ontario. “I prepared so much”, he said, “I had 15 pages of notes comparing sailing stories to the business world.” And his preparation paid off – two weeks later, he had been accepted into the program.

To take his preparation to another level, Evert took two Data Science courses at a Toronto university before starting his master’s degree, which was repaid through the tuition reimbursement program with Sport Canada.

Once he started his master’s degree, it was a great experience. “The average age is almost 30 and the other students are VPs at banks”, he said. “I came in thinking I wouldn’t be useful or I’d get in the way, but in reality it wasn’t the case at all. With the deliverables being done in teams of seven people, I was able to use my team and communication skills to help with the teamwork.”

With the master’s degree underway, Evert’s next step in his transition was to translate his skills and degree into the workforce. Stay tuned to read more about Evert’s story.