Dr Heather Carpenter is a careers and education consultant and counsellor with over 20 years’ experience in education and private practice. Her PhD research is in Career Management and focused on identifying the effective career management skills that sustain career progress and satisfaction in the current employment environment. She is a specialist in career decision-making, and has been involved in designing and producing many career programs and resources; and in developing and writing programmes for tertiary institutions.
As well as maintaining her career business, Heather works for Otago Polytechnic providing individual assistance for those undertaking degrees through assessment of prior learning, and within the Graduate Diploma and Masters of Professional Practice degrees which provide opportunities for degree completion via workplace projects.
Heather is also the New Zealand trainer for the Self Directed Search assessment tool.
Her books, Your 21stCentury Career – new paths to personal success(New Holland Publishers 2010, and The Career Maze – guiding your children towards a successful future’ (New Holland Publishers July 2008) are used by career practitioners, schools and tertiary advisors, management and human resource professionals, as well as parents and the wider public.
Working with clients on career issues
As a careers counsellor she has provided one to one advice to people of all ages and stages, developing specialist skills in career decision-making. After working with hundreds of clients, young people and transitioning adults, Heather developed this program –Choices Match - to help people make the connections that indicate their own best choices. ‘It’s too much to work with all the people that email me for help – I will be referring them to this now to start their own process. They will learn more about themselves and to identify what to look for to make the choices that work best for them.’