Dorra Zmerli Email & Phone Number

What's in a journey?Each LinkedIn profile has more than a story to tell and each story is the product of a unique journey. Then we bring the skills and lessons we learned from this journey to make something of a great value in our jobs. Some of us know these skills while others need to take an untraditional way to know them. That is when you decided to take time off to discover yourself before choosing your career path. Institutions call it gap years, I call it growth years. My journey started in home bilingual country, Tunisia where I had beautiful childhood and a strong traditional education. However, the restricted major choices of universities made me realize that I needed to have more life experiences before going to college. Since my family could not afford financing an international education back then, I decided to teach Arabic and French, and to take English classes.In 2013, I participated in the Tunisian national beauty pageant: Miss Carthage 2013, where I developed my public speaking skills, physical appearance, and mental health. I volunteered in humanitarian causes, such as "la Croix Rouge" for the donation of blood to patients in need, and I developed networking connections in the modelling and entertainment industries after I won the second Runner-up of Miss Carthage 2013. This experience allowed me to get over my fear of public speaking, enhanced my social skills on top of my self-esteem and self- confidence. It was then time for me to help the family business make a good leap because I wanted to discover what was beyond North Africa. I wanted an international education that would allow me to understand people's emotions and mindset. I wanted to study psychology. I went to Santa Monica College( U.S), which is a school that prepares international students to be eligible to transfer to American universities. I used my experience as president of the Phi Theta Kappa( PTK) leadership honor society to lead a research project, conduct workshops, lead a team, and develop develop software skills. My following journey started in 2020 at the University of Toronto during COVID-19. I used the pandemic period to learn online networking and build connections with students and faculty members, which helped me be ready to connect with them in real life when in-person classes resumed. I used my time in Toronto to develop presentation skills and basic data management skills through research data analyst positions. This latter built on my computer and presentation skills I look forward to demonstrating to market research companies.