Our Executive Director Owen, has been conducting interviews with past participants of Learning Buddies Network (LBN) to gain insight into their experience with the organization. The alumni's contributions and time have been extremely valuable to LBN's growth in the past, and now, their advice and feedback will help LBN as they continue to grow and expand. Today’s interviewee is Dena Krieger. She joined LBN more than ten years ago and now works as a solutions engineering team lead.

Thank you for taking the time to return to LBN, Dena! We’re grateful for all the work you put into LBN and so proud of how it has grown from your initial efforts.

Owen: Can I get you to introduce yourself?

Dena: My name is Dena Krieger,  and I was involved in Learning Buddies—way back [in] 2008, 2009, and 2010—as a tutor and Coordinator for both Reading Buddies and Math Buddies. 

Owen: Amazing! And could you tell us where you are now in your education and career?

Dena: I'm currently on maternity leave, but in my regular life, I am what's called a solutions engineering team lead. It's a role where you have both the technical side—so doing data analyses and coding—and then also the customer-facing side, [like] doing presentations for customers. I lead a team [of six people] right now, and they're all data analysts of various kinds. I lead that team and also do some of the individual contributions as well for our higher profile customers. 

Dena: I think my experience with the Learning Buddies Network has really helped me in both my education and my career. Learning Buddies has helped me better understand all of them. Being a Coordinator has helped me with my leadership skills, which I use all the time in my role now, especially [...] where you have to modify [and] be quick thinking [...]. And then being able [to do some of] the administrative stuff: wrangling, tutoring, providing feedback for people. That's all stuff that I was able to gain experience with as a Coordinator in Learning Buddies. I don't work with kids now, but I really enjoyed that part of it. It was super fun to be a tutor and really gratifying. And I wouldn't say that I use that so much professionally right now, but it was a great experience.

Owen: That’s amazing! Thank you for sharing. And what advice do you have for current LBN volunteers? 

Dena: Really try to get to know your buddy. I've seen some really beautiful relationships evolve over the course of [...] the semester or the period of time that you're with your buddy, and that can be a really gratifying experience. Get to know the other tutors,  I've met some really amazing people that want to be volunteers for Learning Buddies. These are people that are great to have in your network and could be your friends, and you can see them on campus, so that's really nice. It's a really great way to meet some really exceptional people. Enjoy your experience! If you like being a volunteer and you see the coordinator job and think, “Hey, I could do that,” then you should definitely try because it's really, really good training for all sorts of leadership. [These are the] things that [...] you'll be able to draw on later in your career.

Owen: I completely agree with that. Definitely. I think being a Coordinator has really taught me a lot of leadership skills. And it's carried me into a lot of different careers, even outside of Learning Buddies, that [the work would be] impossible if I didn't have that experience.

Dena: I totally agree! Yeah.

Owen: Wonderful. And what is your most memorable experience from Learning Buddies?

Dena: I have to say organizing the training was. I still think [about the experience] years later, because what it taught me was not only how to give presentations or speak to a group of people [and] provide them with the information that they need to know, but also to adapt to your situation. Especially in the early days, we didn't necessarily have the most organized training agenda; those meetings had the potential to become very chaotic. So just being able to kind of think on the fly, be organized, respond to things to things that you thought were super clear, but everyone else was very confused [about]—that was really good on-the-job learning for me that I think I've carried forward into my role now.

Owen: That is so interesting. Could you, if you're comfortable sharing this on the recording, speak a bit more about how [the process of starting the Learning Buddies Network works]?

Dena: Again, I don't wanna take credit for that, because I think my mom and Alison have done way more to promote the organization than I really ever did. I was living at home for a year between finishing undergrad and going to grad school. And my mom thought, “Hey, Math Buddies is something we should try. Let's do that!” So, I was part of trying to help get that going, and that process was you wanna try and bridge the fine line between [...] looking for the right resources and finding the right people to do the training. But at the same time, we're the experts on what kind of program Learning Buddies is. [...] So how can we modify it to make it make sense for the program that we have now?

Dena: What that might mean is modifying some of the training material to make it a little shorter, make it a little longer, and then finding the right people [to lead it]. What ended up happening is we were running the math program [and] had a local liaison who ended up being my old Chemistry teacher from Churchill. So, that worked out really well. She ended up coming to the training [...] and I think she was very pleased because it's her student who she's seeing later on still engaging with science and math. I think that was a very gratifying experience for her, too. And, I will say as someone [who has] never [been] the greatest math student when I was in elementary school and high school, I'm now in a technical role where I do data analysis for my job. So being able to remove your [self-doubt] and have the confidence to teach a Grade 5 or Grade 4 student some math, you can go back to first principles and gain some confidence, even in more technical things. This is a program [where you teach] someone how to [improve], and maybe [you can improve yourself as well]. Just [gaining] some confidence through watching your buddy learn can also be a really gratifying experience. 

Owen: That was amazing. [...] And speaking to just how you can go back on those fundamentals and how much you've learned from that, it's just amazing! It wasn’t an easy process to get that all set up, and you should take credit for it as well.

Dena: [...] I think it is a really good program. And we had a lot of fun with the buddies. I remember that Reading Buddies was for Grade 1 and 2, and Math Buddies’ kids were a little bit older. So having that more well-rounded experience was great, too. 

Owen: That's amazing. I'm pleased to share that we're offering in-person math programs for the first time since pre-Covid! 

Dena: That's great! That's so good. It's amazing to see how much it's grown. It's become such a professional organization with staff and it's really awesome to see that. It’s come a long way since wrangling my friends on Facebook. 

Owen: But it was all thanks to the hard work that you put into making this organization started.

Dena: A lot of people, yeah. [Laugh]