After Hours A PROFESSIONAL’S GUIDE TO LEISURE PROFILE
Singin’ in the Game Performing the national anthem for the home team is just the latest gig for Krista Jane El-Khoury
festival. “I got offstage that day feeling like the sky was the limit,” she recalls. “That’s when I realized how much I loved singing in front of people.” Since then, El-Khoury has jumped
at every opportunity to sing, including at fundraisers and school events, and landed a spot on Canadian Idol in 2008 when she was just 16. Judge Sass Jordan gave her a golden
ticket, while Zach Werner thought she might have been too conservative to be a pop star. El-Khoury’s run on Canadian Idol, however, was short — only making the top 200 before fumbling a song. “I [couldn’t] take the mic and say, ‘I’m
sorry, I would like to restart.’ I didn’t have that confidence at the time,” she says. “I’ll never forget that lesson.” Determined to follow her passion, El-Khoury travelled to New York to sing at the Apollo Theater just before landing the gig with the Senators. While she followed in the footsteps of her sister and took up a career in music, she also did the same with another sister, Cynthia, who is a CPA. “[Cynthia] had a strong influence
I
T WAS FALL 2011, Ottawa’s Scotiabank Place. In front of a full house eagerly waiting for the
hometown Senators to take on their rivals the Toronto Maple Leafs, university student Krista Jane El-Khoury took the stage to sing the national anthem. “It was exhilarating,” says El-Khoury,
25, a tax analyst who works at Deloitte in Ottawa, of her first Senators gig. “I guess they liked my performance; every season they have asked me to come back.”
58 | CPA MAGAZINE | MARCH 2017
Musical talent runs in the family. Her grandfather was a singer and her sister, Joyce, is an internationally acclaimed opera singer. Her sister became her role model. “Watching her work hard and build her career brick by brick — I looked up to that very much,” El-Khoury says.
She began singing in public in her teens. Her first performance was Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever” as part of Lebanese Idol, a showcase at a local
in my decision to go into accounting because I had the chance to see the reality of a career in accounting,” she says. Because El-Khoury loves networking, problem-solving and the dynamics of an office, accounting “seemed to be a perfect fit for what I wanted.” And now as her musical career is blossoming with the Senators, El-Khoury is happy to juggle singing and accounting. “I’ve had amazing experience and success in both careers so far, and I’m very proud of where [I am],” she says. “I have the best of both worlds.” — Dexter Brown
Perry Zavitz/KlixPix
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