We are excited to introduce Kendall, our new client development manager at AsiaWest and Intend! A former egg donor herself, Kendall also previously worked at our parent company, Northwest Surrogacy Center, in the finance department. She loves hiking around the Pacific Northwest, hanging out with her dogs, and a more unconventional past-time - sheep shearing!
Hi Kendall! Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and where you're from.
Okay! Hello Evan. I am from San Diego, California. I lived in Nevada for two years before moving up to Portland. I moved up to Portland for school. I studied social sciences. For a long time I thought I was going to be a teacher, and then did a career pivot after I donated my eggs.
I love being outside. I have two dogs named Louise and Filmore - little angels. I love the community I have in Portland - I have awesome friends. I love hiking with them, going to concerts, and I'm a big fiber artist. On the side I shear sheep, and do a lot of knitting and things like that.
Wow! These are all things I did not know about you!
I'm full of surprises!
Yeah, so I'm kind of curious about the career pivot. So you studied social sciences and you wanted to be a teacher. And so then was the egg donation what made you want to work in IVF/fertility - that kind of thing?
Yeah, I think after my retrieval I did more research on what the fertility field looked like and what careers were available. I knew that I wanted to step away from teaching and I was trying to figure out what that would look like for me, because I wanted to find something that I felt passionate about still.
And I felt really good about my donation experience. I liked the idea of helping families grow and helping people have a life experience that either they were struggling with or helping gay couples grow their families - that just sat really well with me. So I decided to look into jobs within fertility and that's when I found Northwest Surrogacy Center.
I started working there as a financial coordinator and I loved it. I loved the company, and it was just a natural progression to move over to AsiaWest & Intend to be the client development manager.
Nice, nice! And what aspect of this job are you most excited about?
I think the aspect of the job I am most excited for is at NWSC I was communicating with the intended parents, but it was mainly over email and I'm really excited to get to connect more with intended parents and hear their stories and connect on that kind of level. I think that is what I'm most excited about.
Yeah it is super interesting and rewarding to hear everyone's stories and everyone has kind of a different path that they've taken. But it's just really rewarding when you do get to have that match!
Yeah! And on the other side of it, the donors... I can't wait to get to know them more because it's always really interesting what brought donors to be a donor. Like it's kind of a niche thing and I just find those stories really interesting, and what brings people to this.
What brought you to egg donation?
So when I was in college my roommate donated her eggs a couple times. I honestly probably wouldn't have thought about donating before - like it just wouldn't have occurred to me that that was even an option. And then she did it - I'm actually not sure what drove her to do it - or like how she found out about it. And at the time that she was donating, it was like always on my mind but I didn't feel ready for the commitment. And so a few years later when I was in a different space in my life and I felt like I was ready to do it and had thought about it for a while, I decided to move forward.
Very cool. I think you'll have a cool perspective being a former egg donor yourself, like when you're talking to donors and talking to intended parents - I think that'll help!
I agree.
So I must learn more about this sheep shearing thing - do tell me more about how you got into this! And do you then knit with the wool that you shear?
Well that was the original plan, but it hasn't worked out that way which is fully fine. Yeah, it's super random. It started with knitted - I love knitting, it's just like my past time. And because I love knitting so much and I also love animals a lot, my future life dream would be to own property and have like a small flock of sheep and you know do that whole thing.
And so I have a clear vision of what I want my future to look like, so I was interested in getting like hands-on experience with sheep, because I'm in Portland now - there's not a lot of sheep in Portland.
So I decided why not start with shearing school. And I think entering shearing school I had an idea that I was going to go to school, become a sheep shearer, you know learn to spin the wool and then knit my garments with that wool. But sheep shearing is super hard and I realized that each one of those things is such a skill in itself, that I let go of that a little bit. But I fell in love with sheep shearing, so I'm just focusing on becoming really good at that.
And I'm still knitting and processing wool and doing all that fun stuff - I'm just more fixated on the shearing aspect.
That's so cool! Do you just go out to farms in Oregon that have sheep?
Mmmhmm! So I started a side business, like a little business just on the weekends - it's called Good Karma Sheep Shearing. And I do small flock shearing in Oregon and Washington.
Wow! That is so fascinating - I love that. It seems like a very physical thing - I mean from any videos I've seen it seems like you're really in there with the sheep.
It is the most physically exhausting thing I've ever done. You struggle with, "Do I just give up and let this sheep go or do I fight through this?" And you just gotta hold on because to catch a sheep is no small task! But I love it and I love spending time with the animals and I love getting to see people's small farms, like going to small farms - it's very inspiring for me and I can like take little ideas to apply to hopefully my future farm.
Wow - what an amazing past time! I have to say you must have the most unique like work past time of anyone I've spoken to thus far!
I know it's super random!
It's great.
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