After graduating from the journalism program at Grant MacEwan College, I decided to try my hand at freelancing. The money never hurts and I guessed I was more than ready to take on the work world. I am also under the age of 30, so writing the Sizzling Twenty under 30 profiles turned out to be more of an adventure than just a job for me.

This is the fourth year Edmontonians has featured 20 up-and-comers in their chosen fields. We thank and acknowledge the various professional organizations and individuals who nominated people for inclusion in the 2005 edition.

To me, this special issue is meant to motivate others to overlook age as a value system. Each of the people profiled refused to let age become a barrier to reaching his or her goals. Nor, in my opinion, should it.

I met some amazing people along the way, and spoke with far more than appear on these pages. I was constantly surprised by peoples’ personal lives when I had pegged them as particular types, only to be thrown a curve. What do you say, for example, when you’re talking to a soft-spoken woman about her love for helping seniors when she casually mentions that she walks around like a pirate, wearing her pet parrots on her shoulder?

I was blown away by the number of individuals that had achieved a balance in their lives between work, personal life and fun. I have been personally challenged—and encouraged—by the men and women I met on this assignment. I hope you will be too.

The hardest part of my job was narrowing the large number of nominees down to 20. There were whole companies that ran on under-30 power. The Citadel, for example, deserves to be recognized for having 17 individuals under the age of 30, working in high-ranking positions. Another case would be the Royal Alexandra Hospital, which has many dedicated and honourable volunteers under the cut-off age working long hours doing whatever is asked of them.

Then there were those impressive individuals who, alas, had reached the pivotal age of 30. While age is not a factor of success, it does represent our editorial scale. There were entrepreneurs, authors, volunteers, managers and festival creators that more than amply deserved mention—and may be featured in subsequent issues of Edmontonians. For those 30 and over, the world is yours… but watch out for these over-achievers who are hot on your heels.