I am updating my alumni profile from 2015 and reflecting on the last decade and can’t believe it has been 20 years since I have graduated from SURP. And dare I say I am now mid-career?
I went into urban planning more by chance than planning (perhaps, ironically) this career path. I studied Economics and International Development Studies for my Bachelor’s degree at Dalhousie University and I knew what type of work I wanted to do then: improve public services to deliver basic needs, community development, and work globally. But, I felt I didn’t have the professional and practical expertise to pursue these opportunities and this led to my application to ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP).
SURP was a definitive time in my life - I moved provinces, was the first to go to grad school in my family, and learned completely new academic material. SURP was a wonderful community and I credit my professors with opening up my perspectives and reflections (teaching case studies from around the world, analyzing different parts of planning, and how to apply solutions to the real world), but maybe more impactfully, I learned a lot from my classmates and respected their knowledge and abilities, and we learned together how to work as a team.
More than 20 years later, I am a professional planner, have worked internationally on fulfilling community programs, gained experience in different areas of planning, and have worked in the not-for-profit, private, and public sectors.
Upon graduation, I worked with the City of Ottawa in community planning through the SURP internship program. I did another internship through the Canadian Institute of Planners WorldLink Program in Hanoi working on Canadian-Vietnamese municipal partnership projects. This led me to working with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in their International Centre, where I worked on a post-tsunami disaster relief program in Sri Lanka.
My career path then took me to the private sector where I worked at MMM Group (now WSP). I worked on master plans, environmental assessments, and community design plans for local and international clients. I credit this time in developing strong policy and project management skills, but I also learned I was a public servant at heart. If I was going to dedicate a lot of sweat and tears to something, I wanted it to be for a public purpose.
I returned to the City of Ottawa where I had a number of roles - development review planner, economic development officer, and program manager. It’s also when I started to develop my interest in city-building projects and worked on Zibi (a major waterfront redevelopment that spans two cities and two provinces), Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards (supporting entrepreneurship and business development), and Adisoke (the new central library in partnership with Library and Archives Canada).
Living in Ottawa for a while now, I wanted to balance my municipal planning experience and work with the other major public planning organization in the city, the National Capital Commission (NCC). I was the senior planner on the redevelopment of LeBreton Flats for nearly five years. I worked on the new master plan and implemented the first real estate and public realm projects under the plan.
I currently work with the federal government in the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada as a senior policy analyst in housing and infrastructure policy. I feel like things have come full circle as I am using both my economics and planning background as well as drawing from my work experience in developing policy and program delivery.
The exciting part of my career has been seeing the projects I worked on paper (or electronically nowadays) come to fruition - it does not happen overnight and usually several years later, but if you stick with what you enjoy doing, you’ll see it proudly one day and have a testament that hard work does pay off. A positive of getting older is I get to see more projects that I have worked on and have a reminder of younger Hieu figuring it out.
I never could have guessed where my career was going to go, I didn’t have a master plan but I always had a wide range of interests and passions that I knew were complimentary, not disconnected. Planning allowed me to work in different roles and fields, in Ottawa and abroad, and make (I hope!) a positive impact. I am not sure what will be next and it may not be in planning, but I know I will always hold the values of a planner.