Day in the life: Debra Fitzsimmons

If you’ve ever purchased tickets at the UVic Ticket Centre, you’ve already caught a glimpse of a day in the life of Debra Fitzsimmons. As supervisor of the ticket centre, she spends a sizeable portion of every day at her desk in the small recess next to the University Centre’s Photo ID Centre. It’s a bustling place, buzzing with phone calls and interruptions, and that’s just how she likes it. “This industry is not a nine-to-five one. You never know what or whom you’ll be dealing with, and it’s exciting,” she says.

Although she may not have predicted her future career path, Fitzsimmons developed an early love of the performing arts. After taking dance lessons as a youth, she became a performer and volunteer with Vancouver’s Pacific Ballet Theatre School. She realized her aptitude for business after creating a line of cards and merchandise for the school as a fundraising project.

Fitzsimmons’ professional career began with a stint as a business development officer for the Bank of Montreal MasterCard. After relocating to Victoria in 1990, she became an assistant manager at a local credit union before joining UVic in 2007. “My job is a perfect marriage of my previous experiences in performing arts and business,” she says.

The ticket centre began as an in-house university service in 2004, thanks to the vision of Martin Segger, former director of University of Victoria Art Collections. “The Farquhar Auditorium hosts an average of 140 performances a year plus additional events for the School of Music at the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall,” Fitzsimmons says. "We provide ticketing services for events on and off-campus, and also to off-campus organizations. We try to keep our service charges low and are responsive to community programming—it brings diversity to our events and to the UVic campus.”

On a busy day, the ticket centre receives about 200 calls, and it sells approximately 150,000 tickets a year. Fitzsimmons praises her staff—one full-time clerk and two work-study students (plus a pool of six casual employees)—to whom she provides regular coaching and mentoring. “The turnover of student staff is very high, and training is a constant,” she says. “The ticketing software is very specific, and staff need to be well oriented in order to provide superior customer service.”

Fitzsimmons also works closely with long-term auditorium clients—such as the Palm Court Orchestra and Victoria Symphony—to implement pricing strategies, coordinate sale dates and media strategies, and assist with performances. “We want all our shows to be a success,” she emphasizes. “We’re always there to provide support and guidance.”

Away from the campus, Fitzsimmons values family time with her husband and three children on their property in rural Saanich. They also enjoy taking in live theatre and music performances whenever they can. She admits that she watches each performance with a critic’s eye and inevitably makes comparisons to her own workplace.

“The UVic Ticket Centre is a gateway to an experience,” Fitzsimmons says. “Every event is a chance for people to be inspired, and it’s a creatively charged environment. We should be and we’d like to be a meeting place for the whole community.”

Info on upcoming events at the Farquhar Auditorium: auditorium.uvic.ca