Corinne St. Claire was working IT and saving up for a skydiving certification when the Covid shut down happened.
While in lockdown, her yoga instructor encouraged her to take a virtual teacher training course. She took the course to deepen her practice, with no intention of actually teaching, but about halfway through the program something clicked. She put in the notice to her corporate job.
“It was like, ‘No, you need to teach,” St. Claire said. “You’ve waited this long. You didn’t realize you were waiting. Now you need to get out there. You need to share the love. Share the knowledge.”
St. Claire, who is an adjunct professor in Computer Applications and Office Technologies at Pierce College has a second career as the owner of Rockdove, where she offers services in both her areas of expertise—tech consulting and event management, as well Reiki healing and sound baths. St. Claire said she turned a desire to be helpful and see people happy into a profession.
“I’ll do a sound bath for a company one day, and the next day I’ll be in their office helping them set up an Eventbrite for a conference,” she said. “It’s kind of fun just to be a human helping other humans regardless of what context we find ourselves in.”
One of the most important things to St. Claire is making her healing services affordable.
“Wellness is expensive and that really bothers me because it should be a right,” St. Claire said. “I will do Reiki for a cup of coffee.”
St. Claire applied to Pierce College because, while at her corporate job, she realized she was training a lot of new hires who did not come with the knowledge to do the job. She wanted to teach people who might one day work for her. In her interview, she did a ten minute presentation on excel.
“Superman destroyed a city and the city was so fed up with this that they had to make an excel spreadsheet to charge him for all the damage that he would do every time he would have to save someone.”
In the Pierce CAOT department, she teaches Computer Keyboarding and Document Applications. In the Hospitality department, she teaches Event Management, where she teaches students the start to end process of planning an event.
St. Claire said she got into event management when she realized she had the right temperament for it, because she loves working under pressure and stays calm when everyone else is panicking.
“There’s always something that’s going to go wrong. Always,” she said. “No matter how much you prepare. There’s a humility that you have to have walking into your event. You may have to pivot on the fly. And that is okay.”
St. Claire said that working in the hospitality industry is all about networking. Although naturally shy, she learned to get over it by “embracing the realization that people don’t care. No one is looking at you under a microscope.”
She wants her students to realize if they put themselves out there and put themselves in uncomfortable situations, it will get easier the more they do it, and that there is nothing better than experience.
Students begin their final event management project the first week of class and work on it little by little each week, while St. Claire provides feedback.
“Everything is coming out perfect because she really helps a lot,” said hospitality major Tien Lam. Hospitality major Johanna Hernandez said she’s an inclusive professor who focuses on every student’s strengths.
“She finds a way where there’s space for everybody in this world,” Hernandez said. “And it’s really nice to sit here and know that there’s people that see the good in you. I can’t wait for the day to finish so I can come over here. It’s a growing environment.”
St. Claire tries to provide more than advice on the hospitality and event planning world.
“We’re all human,” St. Claire said. “Things will go wrong and you’re going to be okay. In the moment it may not feel like it, but really you are stronger and smarter than you think you are in those moments of panic. You will get through it. That moment will pass and it will turn into a memory or a lesson or a story that you tell your friends someday. It’s never the end.”