2024 National Careers Week | Tori Pendergast

This week marks the annual National Careers Week. Snow Australia is joining in the celebrations by asking members of our community to share their story on their career paths and balancing sport. 

Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018 Para Alpine skier Tori Pendergast found her skills as an athlete held her in good stead when transitioning from high performance to a career in Marketing Technology following her retirement in 2020. 

“Entering the workplace I found that I had natural skills that transitioned from my athlete career,” said Pendergast. 

“My ability to time manage, lead a team, be self-motivated, self-disciplined and be determined to solve a problem when faced with a challenge all translated into the workplace.”

Starting to plan for a career post-competitive sport while still competing was an important part of Pendergast’s success. 

“It was important for me to maintain a career alongside skiing so I could feel confident that I had something to look forward to after sport,” she said.  “I studied at university doing a Bachelor of Business and worked in between winter seasons when I could within the Digital Marketing space.

“I also tried coaching the Para Rocky Mountain Team in Canada before fully retiring from my sporting career.”

Planning for the future helped Pendergast land her current role as the MarTech Manager with the Australian Olympic Committee, a role she did not expect to be in. 
 
“When I first came out of university, working in marketing technology didn't have as many job opportunities as it does now,” she said.

“By connecting with different contacts through sport, starting my career later in life and gaining skills as an athlete, I've found myself down a different path I didn't expect but in a positive way.”

Sport is a great connector of people and can offer a wide range of networking opportunities, an asset that has come in handy for Pendergast. 

“My network contacts played an important role in my career transition,” she said. 
“They provided me with great references for a range of jobs and pointed me in the direction of roles that were suited to my skills.”

Having now fully transitioned out of high performance to her current career, Pendergast continues to utilise her insight as an ex-athlete to further engage an audience she largely familiar with. 

“My job involves implementing, maintaining and building the Marketing Technology Stack so we can know more about our fan base who engage in the Olympic Sports and provide more insight back to those sports about their audience,” she said.

“It's great lending an athlete perspective to different aspects of the job and being part of the sporting world again, it makes coming into the office great. ”