Chris Gbekorbu

I'm a philosopher at heart and love to learn new things just for the sake of knowledge. Although I'm good with details, I prefer to look at the big picture and see what's possible. My biggest goal is to have fun and continue to grow while enjoying life.

Chris Gbekorbu’s Specialties:

Researching, writing, educating, taking different points of view, and one-legged squats.

Chris Gbekorbu’s Experience

Board Member

Regina Home Economics for Living Project

(Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

August 2009 — Present (5 months)

Regina HELP delivers educational programs in the community with the goal of helping people to take control of their economic resources. I'm really looking forward to this opportunity, applying strategic thinking, and using my skills to help make a difference in the community.
Property Manager

Self Employed

(Real Estate industry)

April 2009 — Present (9 months)

One of my big takeaways from finance is that cash flow is critical to the success of any business. After looking at market conditions I figured that real estate was a great investment with low operating costs and positive cash flow. Now I'm marketing and managing my own and friends' properties and enjoying it a lot.
Business Writer

Information Services Corporation (ISC)

(Information Services industry)

July 2007 — Present (2 years 6 months)

ISC is the provincial crown corporation responsible for administering land, personal property, and vital statistics registries for the province of Saskatchewan. I create training materials for using our software applications, and I’m one of the go-to guys when people are unsure how to craft their messages to customers.
Lecturer

University of Regina

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

September 2005 — Present (4 years 4 months)

I compare myself to Socrates and say that I'm a corrupter of young minds. I take what's considered to be one of the toughest and most boring subjects that most people don’t want to take but have to, and I make it fun and engaging while helping students to communicate their ideas more effectively.
Personal Trainer

Self Employed

(Health, Wellness and Fitness industry)

April 2006 — September 2008 (2 years 6 months)

I’m a bit [a lot] of a health nut and always being asked for advice on how to work out and what to eat, so I figured I may as well get paid for my knowledge. This was my first real attempt at running my own business and I learned a lot about sales, marketing, and customer service.
Marketing and Communications Consultant

Deep Water Resources

(Marketing and Advertising industry)

June 2005 — April 2006 (11 months)

A failed start up that was going to provide foreign labour for domestic companies. The business model was sound and there was a definite market. While creating communications and marketing material for the company, I got to experience some of the stress and growing pains of a new company and see its demise. Even failures can be instructive and it was a good experience overall.
Researcher

University of Regina

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

January 2004 — April 2005 (1 year 4 months)

Getting paid to find information and learn about new things—how to communicate and teach effectively to culturally diverse students, policies around poverty reduction, and policies around granting academic credit for life experience/non-academic learning. These are all subjects I never would have looked at on my own, but I’m glad I had the opportunities to research them.
Technical Writer

University of Regina

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

May 2003 — December 2003 (8 months)

I interviewed a number of great people and documented the specific steps they took in performing their jobs so that if someone left because they won the lottery, a new person could be brought in and there would be minimal service disruption. The only thing I hated about this job—I had a great view of the park which made it very hard to want to be stuck inside working when it was nice outside.
Technical Writer

SaskPower

(Government Agency; Utilities industry)

May 2002 — April 2003 (1 year )

SaskPower is the provincial crown corporation responsible for supplying electricity in Saskatchewan. I helped power line technicians learn how to do their jobs by creating self-directed learning modules for a Web-based system. I never realized just how much goes into providing people with electricity, and I even got to climb part of a training power pole—a lot of fun.

Chris Gbekorbu’s Education

University of Regina

Diploma , Business Administration , 2005 — 2007

I found that I was becoming more interested in business and entrepreneurship, but didn't have any formal knowledge. My focus was on marketing and finance, and I actually found accounting very exciting.
University of Regina

MA , English , 2002 — 2005

I was actually accepted into a graduate program in psychology as well, but my interests were starting to lean more towards the social impacts of information technology. This was a great opportunity to conduct independent research on an original topic that spanned three major disciplines and that touched upon a number of others. I also got used to finding and integrating a lot of different information in short periods of time.
University of Regina

BA (Hons) , Psychology , 1995 — 2001

I probably took the idea of a liberal education a little too far. I'd always wanted to be a Psychologist, some of the smartest people I knew all had English degrees, and most of my friends went into the life sciences. After struggling for a couple of years to find a second major, I finally settled on psychology and English while minoring in biology and philosophy. The really funny thing—I hated English in high school.
University of Regina

BA , English , 1995 — 2001
University of Regina

Certificate , Economics , 2009

Although it's been called the dismal science, I find it's an interesting subject that affects most aspects of our lives, and a better understanding of economics helps to make a number of business and policy decisions.