Name Natalie Kwadrans | ||
Natalie Kwadrans (born Natalie Andrès on February 14, 1973 in Montréal, Québec) is a French-Canadian athlete. Although she is primarily known as a former member of the Canadian Snowboard Team, she was an avid volleyball player. She played for the Concordia Stingers in 1994–1995.
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Biography
In 1990, Kwadrans' younger brother inspired her to try snowboarding. She began competing in provincial races and finished 2nd in Québec at the end of the 1990–1991 season. In March 1991, she competed in her first international race in the prestigious Burton US Open in Stratton Mountain Resort, Vermont after winning the pre-qualification races to take the only available wildcard spot in the women's giant slalom (GS) and slalom (SL) events.
At the time she started boarding, there were very few women involved in the sport, and Kwadrans became actively involved in promoting the sport. She joined the board of Surf des Neiges Québec (Québec Snowboarding Association) and was their Director of Marketing between 1993 and 1995. She commissioned her brother to create the association's first logo (which he did pro-bono), developed its first media kit, actively promoted the sport in the province and was able to double sponsorship revenues to help grow the association's grass roots and competitive programs. In November 1993, Surf des Neiges Québec participated in the Super Salon de Sport et Plein Air (now known as 'Le Salon National du Grand Air'), which showcased the sport to over 70,000 visitors through live snowboarding demonstrations performed on a slope of snow that was created in the Montreal Olympic Stadium's stands.
Kwadrans moved to Whistler, British Columbia and joined the Canadian National Alpine Snowboard Team in the fall of 1995. She retired when Canada did not send any women snowboard racers to represent the country at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. She returned to school in 1999 and completed her MBA at Athabasca University while working full-time. In August 2001, Kwadrans and her beach volleyball partner, Olga Hibjan, ranked 27th in Canada. In December 2001, she graduated from Athabasca's Executive MBA program and was honoured with the University's Best Papers Award 2001/2002 for her thesis entitled Issues surrounding patenting intellectual property online. In 2009, Kwadrans completed her Lean Manufacturing Certification.
Kwadrans has been focusing on her career in business, project management and marketing, working for some of Canada's and the world's largest organizations, such as Delta Hotels, Manpower Inc., Fasken Martineau, Best Buy Canada, GE Capital, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Shaw Communications and TELUS. In 2003 and 2004, she was the Legal Marketing Association's International Marketing Committee Chair. She wrote "Clients – It's That Simple", a short article which appeared in PM Magazine in May 2003.
In 2004, Dr. Janice Thomas, Dr. Thomas Mengel and Kwadrans co-authored an academic research paper called Surfing the edge of chaos – Developing the master project manager. The paper was selected for presentation at the 2004 Project Management Institute Global Congress – North America held in Anaheim, California. This paper served as the basis of a newer article, Preparing project managers to deal with complexity – Advanced project management education co-authored by Drs. Thomas and Mengel and printed in the International Journal of Project Management in April 2008 (vol 28, issue 3).
In the summer of 2012, she earned her CMA designation.
Kwadrans is now at TELUS as a mid-level manager in strategy, planning and operations. She is also a contract instructor at Mount Royal University's Continuing Education department.
On October 13, 2012, Natalie married Michael Kwadrans, in Streetsville, Ontario. They live in Calgary, with their daughter and dog.
Snowboard World Cup results
Note: only top 30 finishes are listed.