Video Clip: |
Three dynamic women who have staked out successful careers in the textiles industry will inspire your female students to explore new career pathways.Female role models help get this career on the radar of women and girls because they’re able to see someone who looks like them on the job. The video reveals the personal experiences and insights of successful women working in this field. Textiles and related industries employ millions of people. Increasing numbers of women are establishing rewarding careers in the traditionally male-dominated textiles field. |
Career Options for Women -- Textiles:
This 24-minute video features profiles of three women with successful careers in textiles:
- Nathalie Jacques, a planning manager for an upholstery and fabric manufacturer
- Myriam Phaneuf, a research and development technician who creates new textile designs thread by thread
- Tarah Jakubiak, Vice President of Sales for an international fabric producer
Additional information from co-workers and supervisors supplements each job profile.
Meet the role models featured in the Textiles video:
Nathalie: Planning Manager
Nathalie Jacques is a planning manager for Hafner, an upholstery and home décor fabric manufacturer. Nathalie is responsible for coordinating the efforts of various departments working on production.
Nathalie worked as an intern supervisor at Hafner as part of her training and they hired her right away as a supervisor. After training in the textile industry, the job placement is nearly one hundred percent. You can't ask for much more than that!
Nathalie's employer puts their money where their employees' goals are. They'll pay for courses in marketing or a second language, for example. It's a win-win investment for the company and the employees.
Myriam: Research and Development Technician
Textile research and development technician Myriam Phaneuf’s job is to develop creative new designs and fabric styles for her company's fashion line. Myriam takes fabric samples apart thread by thread to figure out how they are made, then creates a new fabric design and plan for the production team.
“What I like about my job is that it is artistic and technical at the same time… It's never the same: you are discovering every day, so it's very interesting.”
The job Myriam does at Consoltex requires a great deal of creativity and imagination. Once an idea comes to her mind, Myriam's excellent communications skills help her share this idea with the company.
Myriam has to create fabric that meets the customers' needs and at the same time, can actually be produced using the company's production processes. Overall it's a big communication challenge when you are the person between the marketing and production departments.
Tarah: Vice-President of Sales
For vice president of sales, Tarah Jakubiak, working in the textiles industry can be quite challenging, in particular because the owner is also her dad. Tarah fell into the business after using her Spanish fluency to help her Dad market to some South American customers. She was a natural. Tarah knows the business inside out and realizes what it takes to create sales and manage her team.
“What appeals to me most about this position is the creativity. You follow the trends, you follow the styles of fashion and what's going on and then once you have it done, you also have to be creative in the sense where you are going to take this product.”
Anyone will tell you that being in sales is not easy. Tarah's company sells to a wide variety of end users. Sales people have to use their imagination to find end uses that suit the fabrics they sell.
It takes a lot of confidence to walk into a meeting cold and sell your products. There's a lot of work just to get a meeting. You have to differentiate your products very quickly and do presentations that appeal to the needs of different customers. Sometimes the product sells itself, but most of the time you have to demonstrate why it's the thing to buy.
Video details:
Run time: 24 minutes total, including three segments of approximately 8 minutes each.
Format: DVD. Closed-captioned.
Year: 2006
Note: Videos are interspersed with Canadian salary and labor statistics, which are similar to the numbers in the United States.
Policies: There is a no-return policy on these videos.
Grade level: Middle School, High School, Two-Year College, Four-Year University