Elyssa Vanlian

Elyssa Vanlian is an Executive Assistant at TD Canada Trust. After obtaining her B.A. in English Cultural Studies at McGill University, she attended Carleton to obtain her M.A. in English Literature.

After having finished my English degree at Carleton, I knew I wanted to take on a role that would allow me a lot of flexibility in what I did. I currently work as an Executive Assistant at TD Canada Trust. Essentially, my role is to provide support to the Region Head of Financial Planning. This support ranges from writing weekly communications, newsletters, and memos, translating documents from French into English, to organizing and hosting client events. Although working for a bank may not seem like it offers a lot of creative leeway, I was able to make my role as Executive Assistant my own. My biggest assets that I leveraged from my English degree were my communication skills, both spoken and written. I took the initiative to apply my writing skills to create our weekly newsletter. I also volunteered to help write conference speeches. In short, in my role, I was able to really highlight the value of an English degree, even when working in a field that does not directly relate to it.

How has your Carleton English degree informed your professional and/or creative path?

After graduating from Carleton, I felt as though I had really sharpened my critical-thinking and communication skills in a way that allowed me to look at a job that was in a seemingly unrelated field to my degree, and figure out how I can relate the two. I was able to bring something new and different to the role that had never been done previously. I don’t think I would have been able to develop my position into what it became had I not come from an English background.

Why Carleton? What specific experiences or opportunities did you benefit from while studying English at Carleton?

One of the biggest deciding factors for me to study English at Carleton was the wide variety of classes they offered in the department. Upon my acceptance, I did not feel like I had to find a niche, or pick classes based on very specific interests. I was able to continue exploring and learning new things rather than being limited to a specific area of specialization.