About The Bold Career Project

 

Our business is helping you develop a brilliant career journey.

 

Leading Provider of Career Coaching, Career Services & Outplacement Services for Executives and Senior Managers

This is Ian Christie, CEO & Chief Career Strategist of Vancouver-based Bold Career Project, and I’m putting to work my 20+ years of supporting managers, executives, self-employed professionals and MBAs in delivering career coaching services, programs and online courses to support your professional journey. The Bold Career team is here to help you understand your market value, define your brand, design your professional journey, get you market ready and support your ongoing career development.

Ian Christie sitting and smiling

What We Do

You are proud of the contributions and accomplishments you’ve created so far in your career. But you aren’t done. Whether you are looking to determine your direction, seeking a promotion or that next big step in your career or ensuring that when the phone rings, you will be ready, you shouldn’t go it alone.

Whether you are a career changer, a passive or active job seeker or are focused on taking your career to the next level of responsibility, income and profile, we support you in the development of one of the most important features of your life – your career.

This is an increasingly complex and competitive professional landscape and the traditional routes to career progression are less obvious. It’s easy to get derailed. It’s all too easy to settle.

We will help you better navigate your professional journey to create more opportunities, more choice in your career, and more control over your professional destiny.

  • Unravel the next steps in your professional journey
  • Uncover and reflect back to you your unique professional value
  • Connect the dots with the marketplace to close the marketing gap
  • Design effective marketing materials (LinkedIn profile, resume, cover letters, personal website) and help you master conversations (interviews, networking, informational interviewing)
  • Develop a network and brand in your field
  • Keep you on track and accountable for your professional goals

Our How

Whether you’re in career transition, planning for future career moves, or wanting to be more intentional about your career, it makes sense to get expert guidance from a career coach not only at key pivot points but also to set yourself up for a stronger future. Bold Career is focused on supporting the development of your career, the growth of your professional profile and network and helping you make smart career moves through career services, career coaching, programs and online training. Here's what you can expect from us:

  • Principles & Processes: Our work is based on the premise that you have a set of professional assets and that there are natural target markets for what you do.
  • Tools & Frameworks: Over 20+ years, our founder Ian has developed and tested numerous tools and frameworks to help you advance your career
  • Market-Based & Marketing Focused: You are both a seller and buyer of your talent, expertise and time. Gaining attention, making your case and pursuing career goals that are grounded in a realistic, validated understanding of the market's needs is a vital part of the process. We are students of marketing.
  • Messaging: We have a gift for finding the right words to describe your offering, or make the case.
  • Appreciative: If you are our type of ideal client, you have a formidable set of skills, expertise and behaviours. We help you leverage those. 
  • Supportive Champion: Unconditional support & encouragement balanced with honest feedback. Constructive challenges to assumptions.​
  • Trusted Advisor: Honest & critical feedback. high-level, insightful advice.
  • Practical & Expert: We bring a strategic and practical approach to your career development grounded on 20+ years of real-world experience.
  • Ideation Partner / Connecting-The-Dots: We excel at ideation and future based planning and have an uncanny ability to pull the threads of your career together, to define patterns and identify opportunities and areas of strength.

Our Difference

Senior Experience: We specialize in the career paths of managers, executives, and other professionals. 

Strategic Insights: From high-impact video lessons to worksheets, frameworks and assessments, we have resources specifically designed for your level to use in a DIY situation or as part of working with one of our talents career professionals or in a program.

Your Unique Story: You have a valuable set of professional assets and your own unique professional story. We help you uncover, appreciate and communicate your value in the marketplace.

Professional Journey Lens: We go beyond the tactical, the current need and help you look at the bigger picture, your professional journey. This lens illuminates exciting opportunities to design and influence a professional journey in service of you.

Bold Moves: You may have more options than the job posting / recruitment game and traditional full-time employment. We can help you navigate these bold moves.

Marketing Gap: Effective personal marketing is the missing ingredient for most executives and managers. This marketing gap is the obstacle to more rewarding and fulfilling careers. We help you close that gap.

Who We Work With & Happy Clients

We work with professionals who want a successful and fulfilling career journey, including individual contributors, Managers, Senior Managers, Directors & VPs, C-suite and Professional Board Members in the private, not-for-profit and public sectors across a wide range of industries in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australasia.

Our team has worked with literally thousands of business professionals over the years. We create and offer products and work 1-1 with clients to develop strong personal value propositions, create career plans, design resumes and LinkedIn profiles and undertake strategic career transitions. 

Our Team

Ian Christie - CEO & Executive Career Coach

I am a Vancouver Canada – based Career Coach and Executive Career Consultant and founder of the Bold Career Project, a leading provider of career consulting, career coaching, online courses for the executive, leadership and senior professional market. A two-time entrepreneur, former senior director at Monster.com, and former retained executive search consultant and former head of graduate career services for a global top 100 business school, I bring deep experience in the fields of personal marketing, careers, self-employment, and senior recruitment, and a passionate believer in the power of the individual to achieve great things. Learn more about my background here.

Headshot of Ian Christie

Matt Jackson - Coach & Client Services

I manage customer experience and business operations at The Bold Career Project. I’m also an Executive Coach who loves to work with entrepreneurs and mid-level managers. 

My experience includes 25+ years leading teams and projects in dynamic organizations including Lululemon and five successive Olympic and Paralympic Games organizing committees. I have deep experience in leading cross-functional teams and driving operational integration within growing organizations. 

Outside of work, I’m a father of four, I enjoy trail running, skiing and exploring on my e-bike. I’m based in North Vancouver, Canada

Headshot of Matt Jackson

Veronica Widmer - Career Coach, Interview Coach

I really enjoy supporting mid-career clients of diverse professional backgrounds as they explore next career steps, whether internal or external from their existing organization. Since 2005, I have collaborated with a diverse set of clients through their individual career transitions including building the practical tool kit (including resume, LinkedIn, cover letter and interviewing techniques) but also reflecting on the critical part of job fit based on interests, skills, values and strengths.

Snapshots from my professional background include career management coaching with the UBC Sauder School of Business, as an outplacement consultant at The Focus Group/ Career Partners International and the YWCA. 

I have continuously focused on self-improvement through learning including a Bachelor of Commerce from UBC's Sauder School of Business, an Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Simon Fraser University specializing in Management and Organizational Studies and a certificate in organizational coaching through UBC Continuing Studies, certification via the International Coach Federation as a  Professional Certified Coach (PCC). Most recently, I have been re-certified on the use of Birkman Method, an amazing tool used widely for career and leadership development.  Another powerful tool I have been certified to use is the emotional intelligence assessment by Roche Martin (Emotional Capital Report) including 360. 

Veronica Widmer_Headshot (1)

Julien Lafrenière - Lead Resume Writer, LinkedIn Writer

All resume writers will tell you how important it is to stand out from the crowd to get noticed. Well, it is. But how do you do this? They will tell you that you need to emphasize your strongest expertise and achievements. This is true. But is it enough? Of course not, they will say. You also need to tailor your content to the target job’s requirements, both to meet the company’s needs and to get through the ATS screening phase. Well, that’s great. But isn’t something lacking? Indeed, there is. At a time when it's become increasingly accessible to apply to positions with a single click, how will you make your resume one in a hundred? Or one in a thousand?

Good salespeople will tell you that you don't sell a product or a service, but rather an experience. No matter what my clients do or where they're at in their career, I'm selling who they are as a person, rather than selling simply what they do. People hire people, not results-generating machines. Let's work together to put a narrative behind those numbers. A story behind those achievements. A great character -you- which employers will easily imagine as part of their organization. A character who they'll want to meet as part of an interview. Let's put YOU on paper and create the trailer to a movie that no employers will want to miss.

I bring experience as a Senior Resume Writer and Language Expert (English & French) with one of the world's largest Outplacement services companies and as a Translator and Certified Resume & Branding Coach for a career coaching firm. Passionate about meeting new people, I take pride in building close rapport with my clients to understand their unique backgrounds and desires, helping them confidently attack the job market with high-quality, tailored documents.

Julien Lafreniere_Headshot_Bold Career

Howie Outerbridge - Providing On-Site Support for Outplacement

Howie has developed deep expertise in adult learning through 25 years of counselling and coaching people in a variety of settings, including private industry, human capital consulting firms, and post-secondary institutions. 

During his career, he has helped coach hundreds of people through a range of workplace career transition issues including unexpected job loss, imposter syndrome, career management, and conflict. He is an active contributor to a growing body of knowledge on career development and transition, a trusted advisor to Hr Leaders, and regularly gives his time to organizations and individuals in need of his expertise. 

Howie’s diverse work experience is one of his strengths; he has held senior leadership roles in local/national consulting firms, institutes of higher learning (SFU, UBC), and the BC Wildfire Service. He is certified in the Birkman Method and the Strengths Deployment Inventory 2.0, and has taught career development and counselling theory at both SFU and UBC.

Howie holds a bachelor’s degree in science (kinesiology), a master’s degree in education (counselling psychology) and a doctorate in education from Simon Fraser University. He is Registered Counsellor (CCC), a Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and a member in good standing with both the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association and International Coaching Federation.

Howie Outerbridge

Contact Us

If you are interested in our expert career coaching and resume writing services and would like to learn more, or determine which services are a best for you, please visit Client Contact. For companies seeking corporate career transition services, please visit our Outplacement Services in Vancouver page. Please use the form below for general enquiries.

Our mailing address: The Bold Career Project, 225 W 8th Ave Suite 300, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1N3. 

Telephone: 604-913-5391

Thank you. We are excited to explore how we can support you.

Bold Career is your compass for navigating a career coach for mid career change. Explore new horizons with our Vancouver career coach services, specially designed for those considering a mid-career change or changing careers at 40 or a career change at 50. Ian Christie, our seasoned career coach, leads a knowledgeable team dedicated to providing personalized strategies, career progression insights, and unwavering support. Your unique journey to success begins with Bold Career – where career coaching meets expertise.

Contact us today!

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