A Profile of Jennifer Green

Jennifer Green, the Director of Competitions and Business Development for Skills Ontario, gets great joy and fulfillment promoting and advocating the skilled trades. Being a skilled tradesperson has been passed on through four generations in Jennifer’s family, and it looks like her kids may follow the family tradition, too. 

By the time Jennifer had graduated from high school, she’d already nailed down an apprenticeship where she began learning about preventative maintenance, project planning, and scheduling. She was also mentoring other students and she was doing keynote speeches for women in trades throughout Canada. These experiences lead to enthusiastically sharing her belief that high school and younger students should be aware of what careers are out there which are fun and financially rewarding. 

“If you don’t ask questions about people and their careers, you’re not properly preparing yourself to make decisions in life. Once you get over that fear, and you start to feel confident then doors start to open,” said Jennifer. “With the knowledge you gain from asking questions, you can go anywhere. And most of the time, people are happy to answer your questions.” 

Her current role with Skills Ontario involves youth competitions in Canada, with the opportunity to compete internationally, just like the Olympics. Competitions cover a wide range of skills and occupations from brick masonry to cabinetmaking to plumbing to photography. Her organization runs 75+ different skilled trades and technology contests in conjunction with six conferences and brings in 47,000 spectators over two days. 

Jennifer has also worked in school facilities. She implemented a brand-new system of creating digital work orders on iPads, which had never been used before. The program improved time management dramatically. 

“Being able to look at what pieces of equipment within a building had been serviced gave us a head start at proactive and preventative maintenance,” she said. 

When she’s not advocating or working with Skills Ontario, Jennifer coaches baseball, paints, and soaks up mystery novels. 

“When I’m watching mystery shows, I try to guess the outcome,” she said. Even at home, her family is always working on a project of some kind.  

“We built a 7-foot trebuchet to fling softballs,” she laughed. A trebuchet is a type of catapult that uses a rotating arm with a sling attached to the tip to launch a projectile and was one of the top choices for artillery in ancient and medieval warfare. 

The family kicked off the project during the pandemic when everyone was homebound. Jennifer and her family have a decent-sized property adjacent to a field and a forest. She and her son did the sewing together. Both kids got to do construction and measurement, using hand and power tools.  

“They build it. And then they used it. That was the most fun part,” said Jennifer. 

One area in which Jennifer would like to improve is financial management.  

“I've been very lucky in my career to have worked with senior leaders,” she said. “Between learning from mentors on-the-job learning, I've taken continuing education classes where I have been lacking, I've been able to build up that skill,” she said. “Although I don't have a degree or a diploma, I have found other avenues to build up the key pieces that I haven't learned. 

Jennifer’s career has been built on advocacy for skilled trades and women in the trades. She’s personally mentored over 50 people, men, and women. One young woman’s parents did not want her to go into the skilled trades. Jennifer and her mentee came up with a strategy which the student shared with her parents – basically that this was important to her, and this was the career she wanted to pursue. 

With a career that has included three years of schooling and 8,000 hours of hands-on work, Jennifer is dedicated to helping fill age, gender, and skills gaps in the workplace. 

“That’s my mission. That’s what keeps me going,” she said.