JudyLynn Archer
CEO, Women Building Futures & The Fixit Chicks Inc.

Where were you born?
Mission City, BC

What did you want to be when you grew up?
I don’t know because I didn’t have the kind of life where one would dream about their future. All I could do was dream of escaping where I was.

Who was inspirational in your life?
My great-aunt Bertha. She told me one time if I didn’t like how my life was I was the one who would have to change it. It took a while for that to sink in. There was also a librarian. I went to high school in New Westminster, BC, and the librarian there, Miss Jean Gilchrist, had a huge influence in my life. To make the story very short, she never did call the police when I would show up in the library high or drunk or anything like that. Later in life I decided to go into library science and it was because of her. I had worked in trucking for a long, long time and decided that I needed to get out of it, I wanted do something else and the only person I would like to be like was Jean Gilchrist. So I went into library science.

Where did you work before Women Building Futures?
Well, I’m 55 so I’ve a number of different what I’d call ‘careers’. One of the careers was heavy hauling in the oil field and trucking. I trucked everything from pipe to heavy equipment to rigs to, you name it, vegetables from Mexico; I’ve hauled it. I went into library science. I then worked in libraries for a couple of years and moved into the provincial government where I worked in a….labour market information centre. Later in life I moved into a career where I started working with small organizations to help them do well, to do what they wanted to do.

What led you to Women Building Futures?
I was working with a group that was interested in learning more about women in poverty. As part of the interview process, someone here in Edmonton said, “Oh, you know, there’s a group and they’re really trying to do some innovative things helping women get out of poverty.” And so I interviewed the founding members of Women Building Futures. And that’s how I became engaged and passionate about their vision.

What’s in it for you?
The payoff for me is that I believe that this wasn’t just happenstance that led me to Women Building Futures. I have experienced family violence and alcoholism and poverty in a big way in my younger years. So much so that I said I would never, ever go back and live on the west coast because the memories there are very painful for me. So somehow through all these years I have now landed and am able to work with an organization and a group of individuals that are doing some very innovative things to help women get out of poverty in a way that they will never go back. And for me that has taken me full circle. I’ve seen how hard it can be when you are in poverty and when you have very few options and you can’t see your way out. Now I’m in a position where I work with women to help them see their way out. We have a team that work with you to help you achieve your goals. So for me it’s just been amazing…It’s either fate, perhaps it’s destiny, perhaps it’s God’s will, I don’t know. But here I am working in an organization that I am so passionate about our mission, and feel so fulfilled and rewarded each day when I get up.

What’s been your greatest challenge?
I think our greatest challenge is making sure that we don’t let anyone slip through the cracks. Because of the realities around funding, and individuals’ eligibility for funding, sometimes a person can fall through the cracks because she doesn’t fit into a particular funding stream. And we are left making a choice. Do we fund this person through money that we raise? Or do we let her go and say ‘sorry, we can’t help you’? That I think is our key challenge.

How do you overcome that?
We raise money. We have established a student scholarship fund. And as a charitable organization—we are a registered charity—our goal is to raise three-quarters of a million dollars to establish this student scholarship fund so that no matter who comes to us in what circumstance, if we feel she’s at a stage of readiness, if we feel she’s got everything it takes to get through our program, to get out there working and be successful but she just needs this one bit of help, then we’re going to be able to provide that.

How do you feel you’ve made a difference?
I think I’ve made a contribution because I’ve been able to take a vision from the founding members. The founding members had a very good vision but these were all women with fulltime jobs and they couldn’t take the vision forward. So I have had the fortune and the luck to take their vision and grow it. And here we are four and a half years later, with a training facility, we able to accept women and help them be successful, help them to achieve their dreams. So for me personally I don’t know what else one could ever want.

What dreams would like to still fulfill?