Time to Shine with Jay Payette

As a fourth-year student, Jay Payette, BCom/05, led Carleton University’s Shinerama team as the campaign manager. Shinerama is a national post-secondary fundraiser in support of the fight to end cystic fibrosis. In 2004, when Jay took on this new role, Carleton University was one of six major schools contributing to Shinerama. The hiring committee was looking to Jay to be innovative and increase corporate sponsorship, on top of the traditional fundraising methods like Shine Day. Shinerama’s largest fundraising efforts take place during fall orientation week, with Shine day on September 7 this year.

“When you’re in your early 20s and a student, you don’t usually have a chance to put your stamp on something, and you don’t get the autonomy to make decisions. I had a chance to be innovative and try some things out, and it was fantastic. It was a very rewarding experience,” Jay expressed.

Around graduation, Jay was hired by a large consulting firm where he worked for six years. He said it was professionally and personally rewarding. It was a fast paced environment and he got to work with clients in various industries. He put this experience to use when he started his own consulting firm, Payette Consulting.

“My feelings were that there was a place on the corporate hierarchy where I felt I should be, and then there was the system,” shared Jay. “So either my view of where I should be in that hierarchy was completely self-delusional, or there was some merit to it. Given that, I had two options. I had the opportunity to just sit back and accept whatever opportunities the system afforded to me. Or I could go out and test my hypothesis in the market.”

He started out working as an independent IT project manager and his business grew. Jay now largely works as a virtual CIO for organizations transitioning or going through a growth period. Leaving his position at the consulting firm to start his own business was something Jay felt he had to do despite the risks involved.

Jay said that he generally lived below his means, which allowed him some personal flexibility during this transition. He also had the support of his partner and from mentors he had accumulated during his undergraduate degree and throughout his career.

Now Jay is a mentor with the Carleton Alumni Mentors program. “I was very fortunate in the access I had to mentors when I was a student, I feel very much obliged to repay that good fortune and make myself available to recent graduates or current students if I can help them in their careers in any way,” he said.

Recently, Jay returned to Carleton to complete a Masters in Design in 2016. From listening to his clients, Jay had recognized many organizations were becoming too focused on process rather than outcomes. Influenced by the ideas of Roger Martin, former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business, Jay applied for his masters. He was the first Commerce graduate to graduate from this program at Carleton. The Masters of Design program aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible, which Jay said created a more productive creative environment.

One piece of advice Jay has for recent alumni is to avoid measuring yourself against the real or perceived accomplishments of other people because it leads you to live outside your means. When this happens, you are less agile and unable to react to opportunities that present themselves.

Jay expressed that one of the most important lessons he learned at Carleton was the importance of relationships, and how to interact with people in a meaningful way.