Accounting for the future

Anatasha Lyons shows her pride in the job NBCC prepared her for.

Anatasha Lyons in her office as account manager at RBC.

By: Tony Bourgeois

Woodstock Among the many graduates of the NBCC Business administration is Anatasha Lyons, account manager at RBC, Woodstock branch. Two weeks before attending the course she was diagnosed with cancer.

Lyons graduated from the business administration accounting program in June 2010. She is currently working as an account manager at RBC.  Two weeks before attending college, Lyons was diagnosed with cancer. Today, she’s two years cancer free. She looks back upon her time at NBCC and said her instructors were very supportive. “I went to all my teachers and told them this is my goal and I don’t want to be treated differently but I will be going through treatment for the next two years and they were highly, highly supportive.” She said the entire experience was a tough and challenging one. She was not only going through her cancer treatments, but had a two year old at home that needed to be cared for. It was the support from friends that made it possible for her to handle. “It was very challenging” she said, “but with the support that I had with the teachers and the friends that I had there it was a camaraderie that really made it possible to go through those two years.” 

She owes a lot of her success to positive thinking in order to get through the piles of schoolwork and cancer treatments. “There’s a lot to be said about positive thinking and making it smaller than what it is,” she explained. “It was a challenge and every day, I told myself this is where I need to prove myself and everything I didn’t do during high school, I‘m gonna do now.” Lyons joined the SRC, which helped her do special assignments and projects in order to get the scholarships she did.

 Now out of college, Lyons looks back at her college experience and tells us one of her favorite memories from when she was a part of the student council. “We did a whole month of ‘We love Haiti’, and we did a bake auction,” she said.  “Everyone would bid on these cakes and cheese cakes and cup cakes and cookies. I swear to God, every time that I tried to win something or go half on something with someone, Tim Marshal would out bid me on the cupcakes. He still owes me about six of them because he looked at me and he knew he was going to out bid me.”

Lyons is still connected with the school through Hillary Crawford. She says she’s still fighting for one of the issues she wanted back when she was the Provincial President. “One of the big issues I wanted when I was the provincial president was to get a health care program in place,” she explained. “I’ve been doing my best to keep in touch and offer my services and volunteering my time.” In fact, Lyons is still dedicated to the idea of a health care program for the school and is still trying to get it into place.  

Lyons says she owes a lot to this school and still suggests to anyone interested to check it out. This college she believes can do a lot for the town. “It brings in people from different areas,” she said. “When I was there, we had a lot of people in my class that traveled down from Plaster Rock and Florenceville.” She says having the school being known for trades will bring in tradesmen from the city that are renting buildings and bring business to the town.

Lyons is just one of the success stories of NBCC alumni and she says she would like to thank all her instructors “I had a great two years with you guys and I don’t regret taking one single step with you. Thank you so much for supporting me.”