Chris Snyder is a member of the Trudeau Centre Advisory Board. He is a pioneer in the personal finance business and co-founder and chair of the ECC Group. He has authored many articles and five books on personal finance. His most recent book, Be Smart with Your Money, focuses on human behaviour and money. He is the former Chair of The Canadian Landmine Foundation, current Chair of HIP (Honouring Indigenous Peoples) and runs hands-on school building trips for Rotary to the developing world. Chris is the recipient of The Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Awards.

Chris Snyder, a member of the Trudeau Centre Advisory Board, presented a seminar on Monday, March 2 entitled “How Volunteering Can Kick-Start and Enhance Your Career.” The seminar presented important insights on growing one’s personal and professional networks as one plans to embark on careers in the peace, conflict and justice realm.

Oftentimes, we think of volunteering as something we do in order to serve our local and global communities, as a kind of service to those in need, but Chris elucidated the symbiotic relationship between volunteers and those they serve. As much as volunteering implores us to provide free services to people who need it, it reciprocally gifts us with intrinsic fulfillment and concrete networks. The fulfillment volunteering provides can satisfy things that a job may not be able to, and the networks it provides can lead to connections that bolster one’s career journey.

Chris shared illustrative examples of ways in which his own volunteering experiences served him. While completing his undergraduate degree at U of T, he became inspired by a friend who played professional hockey, and decided to found a winter festival. This experience produced a great outcome for his local community of Toronto, but it was done purely out of personal interest in the spirit of fun. He has also travelled extensively and gone on countless service trips, which he talks about in detail in his book, Creating Opportunities: A Volunteers Memoir.

His volunteering experiences have enriched his life, and he encourages undergraduate PCJ students to volunteer in any areas that interest them, at any age and at every stage of life.