Wrestler-turned-lab technologist loves her job

Growing up in small town B.C., she never imagined working in a big-city hospital

By Carmen Cheung
Vancouver Sun, November 29, 2008

As a high school student, Jenny Orr spent her weekends travelling to provincial and national wrestling competitions.

When it came time to choose a post-secondary career path, she chose the kinesiology program at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. It seemed only natural for the wrestler to pursue a career in health care, while being able to wrestle on Lakehead’s varsity team.

Little did she know that she’d graduate four years later with an anthropology degree, and, by the age of 28, be working as a laboratory research technologist in the molecular genetics lab at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

“This was all by fluke,” admits Orr.

Though she’d always wanted to work in the health care industry, she never imagined herself working in a lab setting.

“I thought [kinesiology] was a good idea at the time,” she says with a light laugh, “I really enjoyed the anatomy courses and the biology … but by second year I just decided that that was enough.”

She opted to switch into a general program for a few months, not knowing what she wanted to do.

It was a forensics course taught by a particularly inspiring professor that changed her mind. Taking an anthropology course, taught by the same professor, was enough to motivate her to change her major to anthropology.

Orr’s first experience in a lab setting came through the internationally renowned Ancient DNA Internship at Lakehead’s Paleo-DNA Laboratory.

Her internship led her to a summer job opportunity as a DNA technician in the student DNA lab at her university, as well as the opportunity to be a team leader at the same internship program the following year.

“It’s just so fortunate and fluky how everything happened,” she says.

When Orr decided to move to Toronto, though, she struggled with finding a job in her field. She even resorted to working at a local pastry market, but quit about three months later. “I absolutely hated it!” she recalls.

She eventually got a job offer for a DNA lab technician at the downtown Toronto children’s hospital.

Originally from the small community of Salmon Valley, B.C., located just north of Prince George, Orr never imagined “in a million years” that she’d live in a big city like Toronto. She’s grown to love working in a big hospital though and understands that Sick Kids is a positive environment for children who need help.

After two years in her role as a technician, she moved up into her current role of lab technologist in the molecular genetics lab, and absolutely loves it.

Her job consists of breaking down diseases to find which genes the disease affects. She then researches the genes to find the specific information required to make primaries (“little pieces of DNA”). All her tests, research, and findings are then passed into the clinical lab.

“It’s amazing to know that we can help families determine or decide what their future plans are going to be,” says Orr.

Right now, Orr is busy starting her work on a new disease—a kidney disease called MPGN (Membranoproliferative Glomerulonephritis).

She says the busy work is the gathering of research papers to prove that the genes are in fact the ones that affect the disease.

Busy work or not, Orr says she loves her job. “It’s amazing!” she says, her voice getting animated. She thinks about moving away from Toronto, but says she can’t imagine the prospect of leaving her job.

How to get here: “Try to get any experience you can in the lab setting. Volunteering, be a summer school student, co-op program. There are many resources in place . . . our lab (at Sick Kids) is a teaching lab so we always have fellows, but we also get a lot of co-op students.”

Salary range: Orr says technicians are usually in the $40,000 to $50,000 range, and technologists in the $50,000 to $70,000 range, depending on educational experience and seniority.