By Tora Matys
Theresa Stanley is the woman that never stops. After graduating from NAIT with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 2012 she has been involved in over five different entrepreneurial endeavors including Girls on Fire, and one of the largest Taekwon-Do clubs in Edmonton, Phoenix Taekwon-Do.
“[The Business Program] gave me a really solid foundation, because I’ve always had a pretty good entrepreneurial spirit and it’s in my blood line. My dad is an entrepreneur and did his degree in business. I feel like [the program] gave me a hand up with a lot of the technical aspects that I already had as base with all the case studies that I did. I wasn’t trying to become a business leader blind or through trial and error,” said Stanley.
NAIT offered her smaller class sizes, allowing her to build personal relationships with not only the students, but the instructors as well. With a program that is constantly changing and updating she was able to be at the front of the social media wave.
“I graduated around the time that social media marketing started and it was right as Facebook started to open up the ability to target. And so the training that I did on my last year with social media was extremely powerful, because thats a huge part of our [Phoenix Taekwon-do] marketing strategy,” she said.
Phoenix Taekwon-Do has been operating for over 30 years in the Edmonton area, teaching children as young as four what self defense and discipline martial arts have to offer.
Girls on Fire branched off from Phoenix and focuses on empowering young girls through a series of different workshops including guest speakers, self defence training and hands on activities to show girls different ways to deal with stress and other emotions they may feel in their everyday life.
