UTM Management alumna helps nonprofits adapt, collaborate and grow
One of Naina Gazula’s life goals has always been to work for a nonprofit.
Despite being a busy professional she found an opportunity last March to pay it forward at Endeavour, a Toronto-based volunteer management consulting charity that helps small non-profits or charities that can't afford paid consulting services.
Not only does Endeavour fit into her tight schedule, it makes the best use of her talents as a project manager.
“I enjoy being around people who want to grow and learn, and I like being the middle man that helps them get to where they want to be.”
Endeavour’s consulting division is composed of a team of professionals from diverse backgrounds in cancer research, sales operations, and entrepreneurship. The clients they serve come from a wide array of sectors including cultural, education, health, and community development.
Their consultants work with nonprofits that seek help with major projects such as marketing strategy, organizational effectiveness, corporate strategy, and operational efficiency. These projects are often too expensive for a nonprofit to pay for, so Endeavour’s pro bono consultants, who lend their time and expertise to a good cause (at no cost), are lifesavers.
“At the end of the day what I do is centred and rooted in helping people become better because that’s something I’ve set as a personal goal.”
Nonprofit heart, corporate mindset
Gazula is now the director of Endeavour’s client relations team. During the course of an engagement, her role entails developing the client outreach strategy, selection and interview process, as well as onboarding and relationship management.
She believes the secret behind a strong, sustainable nonprofit is the application of a business mindset. “I want to try and bring the mindset of how a for-profit corporation operates to a nonprofit, with the same kind of drive and razor-sharp precision to efficiency."
After graduating from the University of Toronto Mississauga, Gazula was hired at telecommunications giant, Bell, where she worked her way up to a position in process innovation and engineering. It was a role, she says, that defined her as a person “I learned how to use numbers to actually drive a story; an idea is not much if it doesn’t have numbers backing it up.”
After four years at Bell, Gazula made the jump to KPMG, one of the Big Four multinational accounting and management consulting firms, where she is a senior consultant for strategy and operations advisory. It turns out that they were looking for someone who had a customer experience background that intersected with telecommunications.
"I've now worked in the public sector, banking, and insurance as well. KPMG allows you to diversify even if your specialty is tied to one area."
Just three months on the job, Gazula was asked to run a workshop on customer service operations where she focused on building better relationships with the telecommunications industry – an uncommon feat for anybody who is new to the consulting industry.
“The cool thing about why I chose this role and what this portfolio does is you have to be on the client’s side,” she says. “You’re building business relationships and you’re building the structure and the goals for your organization.”
Student life
As an undergraduate student at UTM it was Gazula’s extracurricular experience in the work-study program that opened her eyes to what she was passionate about.
“I really enjoyed helping others and leading, as well as working collaboratively in a team.”
Gazula looks back fondly at her time on UTM’s now defunct Student Management Association (SMA), a student-run organization dedicated to providing management students professional learning experiences outside of the classroom.
“It was there where I learned how to navigate difficult relationships and conflicting priorities, and being able to delineate when something is objectively good for an organization versus someone being hurt about their opinion being shut down because of ego.”
Subsequently, the IMI Business Association (IBA) formed in March 2019 to provide all undergraduate business students in the Commerce and Management programs with professional development opportunities through yearly activities and events.
Recently, Gazula signed up to be a part of the Advanced Mentorship Program offered by IBA and to stay connected to her alma mater.
“I am a huge supporter of collaboration, and there are great resources on both the management and commerce side. You can do a lot more when you come together.”