Leviton Territory Manager, Nick Foster Breaks Down EFC’s Young Professional Network

Feb 12, 2020

By Blake Marchand

Nick Foster is Territory Manager, New Brunswick & P.E.I for Leviton. Foster was recently appointed as the Atlantic Regional Chair for Electro-Federation Canada’s (EFC) Young Professional Network (YPN).

Nick joins newly appointed National Chair, Sean Bernard of Ideal Industries, Ontario Region Chair, Joanna Kwant of Gerrie Electric, and Quebec Region Chair, Jean-Francois Gravel also with Leviton.

Nick has been with Leviton just under five years as Territory Manager. He initially got involved with YPN right around the time he started with the company. Previously working for a network cabling company, he wasn’t coming from an entirely different industry. Although, he began attending YPN events at the recommendation of a colleague as a way to become more familiar with the industry.

“I sat on the board for a couple years and helped out there, and then the opportunity came up to become chair and I always like to challenge myself and help out with volunteer work,” he said of his decision to run for a chair position.

The YPN is structured around three simple pillars, ‘give, gather, and grow’. They ‘give’ by using their resources to raise money for various organizations and charities, helping to support the communities they live and work in; ‘gather’ refers to the networking aspect, while building the soft skills to help ‘grow’ members as individuals and professionals. In that regard, Foster explained, “What we try to do with the ‘grow’ events is we have the professional speaker or industry speaker – we have that first and then in the evening we try to get a networking event together.”

Whether its axe throwing, which Foster singled out as an interesting event from last year, attending professional hockey games, or even wine tasting, Foster said, “Every single one has its own perks and pluses.”

“Getting to know people your own age from all around the Maritimes, that’s priceless. You’re building relationships that will last your entire career,” he commented, discussing the benefit of the program, “There’s 75-80 of us in Atlantic Canada, right now. We are the next wave of professionals in our industry, so when you meet from a YPN perspective it’s all on neutral ground. It doesn’t matter who you work for, if you’re the competitor it doesn’t matter.”

At the time of Canadian Electrical Wholesaler’s interview with Mr. Foster, they were still filling out the committee for the Atlantic region, as they are in a bit of a transitional period with the new year and leadership slate. Although, with respect to this year’s line-up of events, Foster said, “We got lots to look forward to. On our committee we have connections to some great speakers, great industry professionals that we’re going to line up for each quarter of the year – I never get tired of throwing axes or other networking opportunities that we can get together on each quarter.”

Blake Marchand is an Associate Editor with Kerrwil Electrical Group