Kate-lynn Nebonaionoquet is originally from the Sudbury area, but the work that she does has helped her see and fall in love with travelling the world. Her mother is Anishinabek and her father is from Serpent River. Growing up, she moved around a lot, helping her acclimatize to new environments and be flexible with her plans. Now, she works as a service director at Air Canada which means she is the lead flight attendant on the flight.

Looking back on  her educational and professional journey, when Nebonaionoquet was in grade eleven she completed a language exchange in Germany for a year, sparking a travel bug in her. It was her first time on a plane and she didn’t speak any German. She didn’t know the family she would be living with. At the end of her experience, she returned from Germany, finished grade 12 and went straight to university.  She studied linguistics and philosophy, planning to teach overseas. In her third year, she was hired by the Niagara District School Board as a support staff member where she worked as an in class tutor, working with Indigenous students.

Nebonaionoquet worked there for four years and realized she wasn’t ready to go overseas and teach because she was comfortable and had meaningful relationships. At the same time, she graduated from university and no longer qualified for the program. Reluctant to return to Sudbury, she applied on all available jobs and Air Canada was one of them. She got a call back, interviewed, was trained and got her start as a flight attendant.

Working as a flight attendant, Nebonaionoquet has had the chance to travel to Delhi, Germany, France, London, South America, to the US and across Canada. She found comfort in her job the same way she did in the school she worked at. She was having fun and built a schedule she enjoyed.

“In this industry, there's something for everyone. If you have kids at home, you can work all night. You can work weekends. If you like to be up early, we've got early morning flights… If you like to go off onto international adventures, we have that too,” Nebonaionoquet explains. During the pandemic, she was laid off and worked in security in the mining industry until she was called back to work. She worked for a year until she was promoted to service director, a role she’s occupied for three years.

If Nebonaionoquet could give advice to Indigenous students who have the opportunity to leave home it would be, “Do it. When you start at home, the world looks like this great, big place. Once you start going and getting familiar with newer places and different places along your journey, it's going to look a whole lot smaller and a whole lot less scary. You're going to make new friends, you're going to meet new people, and you'll learn the things of the new area that you're going to be in. So just do it, because it'll make the world so much smaller and that much more interesting."

When it comes to overcoming obstacles, Nebonaionoquet tries to look at the big picture, looking at the final outcome and the reward that is waiting. While as a whole, challenges can be overwhelming, she breaks them down into tasks to make things more manageable. “There's always going to be obstacles in the journey. You're always going to come across something. Nothing is ever a smooth, straight path to success. You're going to go up, down and around,” she observes.

“There are a lot of people out there that want to see you succeed, as well as those that don't. Find the ones that want to go along that path, that have the same mentality and the energy that you want to be a part of. You'll find them, and you'll attract them, and they'll help you get through these hurdles,” Nebonaionoquet continues.

If Nebonaionoquet could share a message with her younger self it would be to “jot down every idea, every goal, everything that seemed to interest me, that I would like to do and accomplish in this lifetime, and then go from there.” She would have liked to have used those notes as a reference point whenever she felt lost to get direction, motivation and to add to it when she felt inspired.

Thinking about her health and wellness, Nebonaionoquet focuses on her personal time and rest seriously. She is not on social media, something that she finds adds to her peace of mind. She likes being able to disconnect when her job requires her to be “always on”. She has firm boundaries around communication and prioritizes relaxation. She goes to therapy and prepares for what the changes of season bring to her life.

When she needs inspiration, Nebonaionoquet looks to books like Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles and another book called The Four Agreements. Bob Proctor is someone who inspired her when she was in university. Those sources have shaped her into the person she is today.

Sudbury is where she came from, but Kate-lynn Nebonaionoquet gets to see the world because of the work she does as a service director for Air Canada. She planned to teach overseas but her plans changed and she became a flight attendant… her career only went up from there. She got her first taste of travel in Germany as a teenager and now she can go anywhere she wants.

Thanks to Alison Tedford Seaweed for authoring this article.