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By Molly Randhawa

No one can deny Google Maps’s influence. We use it every day, sometimes for directions, other times to find “cute coffee shops near me.” Not many of us can say, however, that it helped us choose a university.

“Funny enough, I found UVic just by looking on Google Maps,” says Drea Pedersen, BCom ’25. “I was browsing Canadian universities and thought, ‘Oh, I kind of want to move to BC. That sounds fun.’ I had never even heard of the Island before. I zoomed in, saw the circle,” referring to Ring Road, “and thought it looked cool. So, I applied, and got in. It was my first choice.”

Drea grew up in Vail, Colorado, a small ski town known as an outdoor lover’s paradise. Life there moved with the seasons: it was quiet in the off-season, lively during tourist season. She wanted something different, and that fateful Google search led her to UVic, where a campus tour confirmed her choice.

“We did come visit,” she says. “I talked to someone who had great things to say, and I really liked UVic’s co-op work placement program. I hadn’t seen many universities actually equipping students with real, paid experience. In the States, so many internships are unpaid, and that just didn’t sound worth it to me.”

That decision to trade Colorado for the coast opened the door to Gustavson’s BCom program. From there, Drea began to chart her own course — one that would eventually lead to health and sustainability. So how did she make that leap?

Always a sustainable outlook

In 2013, the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing and injuring thousands of garment workers and sparking a reckoning about how consumerism and fast fashion were harming both people and the planet. Reading about the disaster stuck with Drea. It raised questions about how organizations work and who gets left behind.

“I think I was a senior in high school, I remember researching about it and thinking, ‘why aren’t people still talking about this,’” she recalls.

“I felt something similar when I really came face-to-face with the reality of the climate crisis. That was probably around the same age. Where I’m from we just weren't educated enough on the climate crisis, so when I did educate myself, I felt very compelled to do something—even though I didn’t know what that would be.”

Her search for answers eventually led her to business and economics, where she began to understand how deeply entrenched systems shape the world.

“As I started exploring business, and especially economics, it was really enlightening. I realized, ‘Oh, if our economic system is built this way, then real change won’t happen unless the system itself gets rebuilt.’ That really hit me, and it helped shape where I wanted to focus my studies. Looking back, there were hints throughout my life pointing me in this direction.”

Those little moments pushed Drea to pursue a BCom degree at Gustavson, and even further to start integrating these principles into her career. She started working with during a co-op work term, where she would start bridging the gap between planetary health and human health.

Co-op work-term placements, coffee chats & Copenhagen

When Drea entered the BCom program, she knew she wanted to study business—but not exactly why. Like many students, she saw it as a versatile career path. What she didn’t expect was how work terms and exchange experiences would connect business with her early interest in sustainability.

“During third year, I had a co-op work term at Island Health in digital communications—writing and communications, internal and external. I loved it. It was creative and fun,” she recalls. “But even then, I realized I was more interested in operations and sustainability, especially environmental sustainability.”

That co-op work term gave her a chance to explore sustainability within a professional context. “Through that work term, I set up a coffee chat with someone on Island Health’s sustainability team. That got me even more interested—especially in healthcare and sustainability together,” she says. “Healthcare is something that’s never going away, and to me, running operations in a sustainable way should also never go away. The intersection of planetary health and human health felt like a high-impact zone where I could really make a difference.”

The turning point came on exchange when she went to Denmark. “ (CBS) has some of the best sustainability courses in Europe. What’s interesting is that I didn’t get my first or second choice for exchange, but it worked out perfectly. The advisors really looked out for me, because CBS ended up being the best fit for my interests. I took four sustainability courses there with some of the most intelligent students I’ve ever met, and I learned so much.”

When she returned to ӣ��Ӱ��, Drea knew exactly where she wanted to focus. “When I got back, I saw a posting for an Island Health Environmental Sustainability work term, and I jumped on it. I already had Island Health experience, so I figured I’d be a strong candidate. I even emailed them multiple times to make sure my application was clear—I was so eager! Luckily, my boss saw that as initiative and passion. I got the role, and it was an eight-month co-op work placement, which pushed back my graduation date by a few months, but it was well worth it.”

By the time she graduated in June 2025, she had already built a career path for herself. Now she works as a Sustainability Analyst at Island Health.

Curiosity as a compass

For Drea, exploration has never been about checking boxes. Her early questions quickly took shape in her studies and work.

That same curiosity now guides her work at the intersection of healthcare and environmental sustainability, where systems and operations shape real outcomes for people. It’s a path that feels purposeful but not fixed.

“What is the area of the world that I can impact the best because of who I am and of what I naturally gravitate towards?” she asks. For now, the answer is healthcare. But she doesn’t rule out other possibilities.

“To me, that career evolution would be exciting—same vision, same purpose, but a different setting and new challenges. That’s how I see my career unfolding.”

She laughs, remembering how it all began with a Google search for a university she’d never heard of on an island she knew nearly nothing about. Years later, that same impulse to follow what sparks her curiosity still guides her forward. “I think just following that—maybe not a calling, exactly, but a curiosity is how I ended up where I am now. And I’m really happy here.”