Megan Patterson
- Bachelor of Arts in Psychology (1998)
Megan Paterson graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1998. Megan is currently the Chief HR Officer for Kinaxis, a publicly traded software company with operations around the world.
What skills did you learn in your degree here at Carleton that helped you in your current position?
I think most of the courses I took helped shape my career into what it is today, but definitely organizational psych courses had the most direct impact, along with psychology of sport and performance more indirectly.
What did you do after your degree in psychology?
I had no idea what I wanted to do; I thought about obtaining my masters but my undergrad thesis work just wasn’t really for me. I preferred doing a variety of things vs one subject/topic in great depth. I was very fortunate to fall into recruiting, which led to head hunting, which lead to internal HR and have grown from there.
Do you have any advice for students thinking about joining Psychology at Carleton?
I had originally attended another university for my first year and then switched to Carleton for my final years. In retrospect I am SO lucky this happened; it gave me a great point of comparison. The Psych program was far and above my other university; in terms of curriculum (quality, selection of courses), professors (were all fantastic). My first university had a much better “reputation”, but Carleton had far superior academics and I absolutely loved my time there.
Do you have a favourite memory, or favourite instructor that had an impact on you here at Carleton?
Lol….this is not “work” related but I saw the episode where Rachel and Ross got together in friends for the first time, standing in the doorway of Oliver’s with what seems like thousands of other students. In retrospect it’s such a tiny, non event but at the time I felt like I was really connected to all of the students at Carleton.