BCBUSINESS.CA APRIL 2021 BCBUSINESS 15
Samantha Kolb travelled to Sri Lanka three years ago to
work for the United Nations, helping the country with its recon-
ciliation process after its 26-year civil war, which ended in 2009.
The Victoria native had taken the internship during her master's
degree from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
at the University of Toronto. Kolb graduated in 2019, returning
to B.C.
She planned to start her humanitarian career in earnest, con-
tinuing to work abroad in post-conflict reconstruction. Then the
coronavirus pandemic struck, grounding global travel along with
her ambitions. International nongovernmental organizations
stopped hiring, with no way to predict when they'd start again.
Kolb realized she needed to make her CV more appealing to a
broader range of employers. "I wanted a little bit more resilience
to the changes that were happening," she says. But Kolb had
already earned two degrees—she started her BA in political science
and international development at Halifax's Dalhousie University
in 2011, completing it in 2016 before heading to grad school. She
didn't want to spend more years and money earning a third.
So the 27-year-old enrolled in an eight-week digital market-
ing bootcamp run by Alacrity Canada, a Victoria-based non-
profit that promotes technology entrepreneurship. Instead of a
degree, diploma or certificate, she earned a micro-credential—a
certification that she had acquired a targeted set of skills in areas
like branding, analytics and content distribution.
Partly thanks to career
pressures created by
COVID-19, micro-
credentials are catching
on with B.C. universities,
c
olleges
and other
providers. For students,
th
ese
quick skills boosters
can have a big impact
b y D E E H O N
p o r t r a i t b y N I K W E S T
m i n i
school
*
2021
EDUCATION
GUIDE
