CELEBRATING OUR OWN
It's been 15 years since Doug Caldwell founded the Top 40 Under 40 awards, and the country is just learning to celebrate its own, says Ron Charles, partner in Caldwell Partners International, which runs the project.
"Having come back from the Olympics, [it] was really a coming of age for Canada," says Mr. Charles. "We, as Canadians, are doing a much better job of celebrating our own."
Fifteen years ago, though, Mr. Caldwell believed that Canada did not honour its community leaders enough.
Canada's Top 40 Under 40 recognizes the achievements of Canadians who were under the age of 40 by Dec. 31, 2009. The 25 members of an independent advisory board, who work in a wide variety of fields, choose the honorees from about 1,100 nominees through a selection process based on five criteria: vision and leadership; innovation and achievement; impact; growth and development strategy; and community involvement and contribution.
"What's wonderful about this program is that every year you find out about another young Canadian who's doing something world-class," says Mr. Charles. And they often go on to do a wide variety of sometimes surprising things, he adds. Mr. Charles randomly cites five alumni that demonstrate the kind of leader recognized by the awards:
Gregor Robertson (2003) was co-founder of organic juice company Happy Planet. He went on to become the current mayor of Vancouver.
Paul Alofs (1995) was president of HMV Canada and is now leading the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation.
Pernille Ironside (2007) continues her work with UNICEF, now overseeing child-protection efforts in conflict zones and after natural disasters.
Russ Girling (1998) was vice-president of finance at Transcanada Corp. and is now succeeding Hal Kvisle as CEO.
Craig Kielburger (2005) who founded Free the Children and was the youngest honoree at 23, remains an activist.
Another benefit to the Awards is that the recipients "meet leaders in Canada probably 10 years sooner than they would have otherwise," says Mr. Charles. They are then part of a growing network of winners and become involved in activities like fundraising and public speaking.
This year's Top 40 is sponsored by Deloitte, National Bank Financial Group, WestJet and The Globe and Mail.
****************
EAN IVENS, 39 / MEDICAL SERVICES ENTREPRENEUR
Medic with no wheels built ambulance service
The first time a prospective client asked Sean Ivens to submit a proposal for providing ambulance services, he had to go to the public library to find out how to write one. In fact, Mr. Ivens didn't even have an ambulance. His company at the time, Medic North First Aid Training and Supply, sold first-aid kits and provided first-aid training to companies.
Nevertheless, Mr. Ivens sent a proposal to the oil exploration company, located in a remote corner of the Northwest Territories. And he got the contract.
"I somehow managed to borrow some money and went and spent $15,000 on medical equipment and an old GMC Suburban, which became the ambulance," recalls Mr. Ivens. "My revenue that year went up to $40,000 from about $9,000 the last couple of years.
"The following year it shot up to $400,000 and the company went from just me to a staff of about six."
Today, Medic North Emergency Services Ltd., is a multi-million dollar company with about 45 employees, that include nurses and critical-care paramedics.
Recently, Medic North landed a contract with the Northwest Territories government to provide emergency medical staff for the territory's air ambulance service. "It was a challenging contract because it required us to have this fully functioning operation with staff on call 24 hours a day," says Mr. Ivens, noting that his company provides only the medical services, not the helicopters. "It's a very busy service - we're transporting close to 1,000 people a year."
And to think, Mr. Ivens wanted to a be cook.
Growing up in the small town of Hay River in the Northwest Territories, he left to attend cooking school in Calgary but decided he wanted to become a firefighter instead. "But when I moved to Fort McMurray, I was told that, in order to become a firefighter, I needed to be certified as an emergency medical technician," says Mr. Ivens. "So I went to Lac La Biche in Alberta for emergency medical training."
Mr. Ivens is a long way from the days when he didn't know how to write a business proposal. In addition to Medic North, he owns 13 other companies in businesses ranging from property development to hotels and mini-storage.
"Being from the Northwest Territories, we have a fairly limited sense of economic opportunity," says Mr. Ivens, who lives in Yellowknife with his 13-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son.
"So, yes, I'm pretty amazed at where this journey has taken me."
**************
ALI PEJMAN, 37 / FINANCIAL SERVICES
When it comes to raising money, 37-year-old Ali Pejman is a bit of a whiz kid. During the past 10 years he and his team at the company in Vancouver now called Canaccord Genuity have raised more than $2-billion in new financing for a host of companies, from start-ups to giants in the mining industry.
But that's only part of the tale. He has also raised millions for his three favourite charities: Big Brothers, the BC Children's Hospital and his alma mater, the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.
The son of Iranian immigrants who fled their home country after the 1979 revolution, Mr. Pejman, who is Canaccord Genuity's head of public venture capital and managing director of mining, readily admits that making his family proud, especially his mother, has been one of his driving forces. "I owe a lot to my family. Making them proud of me is very, very important." As is creating a legacy of achievement for his wife Kirsten and two small daughters, Isabella, 4, and Zara 2.
Mr. Pejman came to Canaccord from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, where he was manager of corporate taxation. He sits on the BC Securities Commission, the securities policy advisory committee of the BCSC and the TSX Venture Exchange's local advisory committee. He also squeezes in hours spent at the Sauder School mentoring MBA students. "As I said, success in business is important but it is equally important in this family to give back to the community," he says.
***********
CHRISTINE HEALY, 38 / CIVIL SERVANT
In conducting high-stakes negotiations with giant oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., Christine Healy says the key to a successful outcome is knowing yourself and what really matters. "I tell people who are new to the negotiation team that you have to imagine that you've set a beautiful table, with all the things that are important to you, and the other side have done exactly the same thing," says Ms. Healy, a 1996 Osgoode Hall Law School graduate who is commercial adviser for the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Natural Resources. "The whole negotiation process is about picking things up off the table and deciding whether you really need them or not. Even though you are very attached to your mother's crystal glass, it may have to go. You have to take a very careful look at what you really want to have on that table."
Given that approach, Ms. Healy and her 18-person team last February concluded the Hibernia South Project, one which will mean $13-billion in direct revenue to the province. It's the third such deal that Ms. Healy was instrumental in producing.
"We're a province of 500,000 people, and we've had significant challenges in the past," says Ms. Healy. "These projects are an opportunity to be game-changers. Everyone on the team is a passionate advocate for Newfoundland and Labrador, and we see the potential that these projects have."
"It's a lot of hours," says the married mother of two sons, ages 7 and 5.
************
FRANÇOIS DESJARDINS, 39 / FINANCIAL SERVICES
Three to four times a year, François Desjardins wheels a cart through his office and offers up Danishes, fruit and coffee. While he likes an opportunity to get out and speak to his employees, it might be that he simply enjoys tasks not usually taken up by trust company presidents.
Mr. Desjardins, who runs B2B Trust, a Laurentian Bank of Canada subsidiary that supplies third-party banking products, has been known to join in on a sales blitz when needed, even moving from his office to a simple cubicle and posting his totals on his wall.
His banking acumen came from the ground up. He began as a customer service rep in 1991 and, as he moved onto higher-ranked positions, he left a trail of innovation in his wake, such as the software still being used today that he helped design for managing his tele-banking employees. Mr. Desjardins became a vice-president at 29; at 35, was also the youngest-ever member of the bank's management committee. While doing all that, he earned a business degree from HEC. Today he is President and CEO of B2B Trust, and executive vice-president at Laurentian Bank.
Single and dividing his time between Toronto and Montreal, Mr. Desjardins says his father taught him to develop an environment where colleagues are there for each other. Being there might mean helping out in a crisis but it can also sometimes mean standing at the other end of a coffee cart.
************
CLIVE OSHRY, 39 / FINANCIAL SERVICES
Eleven years ago, Clive Oshry's father Aaron came to him and his older brother Michael with an idea. Oshry the elder was a lawyer; he felt their hometown of Edmonton might be ripe for its own foreign exchange company.
After all business in the oil patch looked to be on the upswing; lots of Alberta companies were starting to do business abroad and the only competition would be from the big banks, which did not seem all that keen on transactions that might be as small as $5,000.
Clive, who turned 40 this past January, and Michael, 42, jumped at the chance, says Clive.
The result is Globex Foreign Exchange Corp. The company now has 22 offices around the world, 210 staff and this year will do tens of millions of dollars in business. Clive, along with Michael, is co-president of Globex. Globex prides itself on delivering the same level of personal service to all its clients, big or small, corporate or private individuals and is willing to take on transactions starting at $5,000 and then heading north of $5-million, he adds.
What sets Globex apart from the competition is its team, Clive says. "Our team is what I am most proud of. All of them have this commitment to excellence and to lifelong learning.
"It is our culture that has led to our success and my brother and I plan to keep it that way, no matter how large we grow."
**********
JEFF MELANSON, 36 / BALLET SCHOOL DIRECTOR
Jeff Melanson wants to convince every Canadian they're an artist. "The point of art is to love it. We wanted to enable and encourage what I'd call 'participaction' for the arts, a more active, creative engagement with Canadian society."
Although he started at the National Ballet School in 2006, Mr. Melanson's background was not in dance. He trained as an opera singer, and was the dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music until this most recent appointment as executive director and co-CEO of Canada's National Ballet School.
Mr. Melanson grew up in Winnipeg and came to formal singing through high-school musicals.
A new role for the National Ballet school, away from its traditional connections and moving to a more populist approach, is a recent partnership with the television show So You Think You Can Dance? "We partnered with them, the show shoots here at the school, and we created a website with them called wanttodance.ca, which went across the country and registered a thousand dance schools so that people watching the show could study dance themselves. " Mr. Melanson said this approach moves away from the old style of engagement with the arts, where organizations concentrated on building a donor base and building an audience. He is married to Jennifer, an acclaimed pianist, with three kids, Caelan, 11, Maddie, 9, and Claire, 7, and lives in Cabbagetown in downtown Toronto.
***********
CHRIS GOWER, 39 / CONSTRUCTION EXECUTIVE
Chris Gower says his parents had one rule he and his brother were expected to live up to. "My mom said, 'I don't care what you do. Just love it,' " he recalls.
What Mr. Gower enjoyed most was swinging a hammer. "What I've always loved about the industry is that at the end of the day you get to leave a piece of yourself behind in every project you build," says the regional vice-president of PCL Constructors Canada Inc.
Mr. Gower graduated from Fanshawe College in London, Ont., in 1992 with a diploma in Construction Engineering Technology (Management). He joined PCL three years later, becoming a district manager by the time he was 31.
"That was pretty scary," he says of being sent to cut his managerial teeth in Saskatchewan, where PCL was founded in 1906. "I just wanted to make sure I didn't go out to Saskatchewan and screw up a perfectly good legacy."
While he no longer gets to spend as much time as he'd like on job sites, Mr. Gower says running a $1.3-billion dollar operation has other challenges and rewards. "I'm currently involved in starting up a new operation in Australia. That is another interesting aspect of the job where I get to learn all about Australia and doing work in the Pacific Rim."
Mr. Gower lives with his wife, 10-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter in Oakville, Ont.
********
TED HASTINGS, 35 / ONLINE PUBLISHER
It's not surprising that the head of one of Canada's leading online publishing companies starts every business day by writing letters to his children, five-year-old Avery and two-year-old William, and posting them to their personal websites. "I have spent a lot of time on the road for work and therefore don't get to spend as much time with my kids as I would like," says Ted Hastings."
He graduated from Waterloo's Wilfrid Laurier University with a degree in business administration and joined Deloitte & Touche as a senior associate in 1997.
After tours of duty at other firms, he was named president and CEO of Moxy Media and helped increase the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by 375 per cent in 2009 over 2008, he says. The company now owns and operates more than 300 consumer information websites.
Mr. Hastings is an avid weight lifter and at one time was ranked one of the Top 10 power lifters in Canada in his weight class. He tries to make it to the gym every day, but says he is still struggling with his work-life balance. "I think I've taken two vacations in the last decade and one of them was my honeymoon, so I've still got to perfect that," he says.
***********
EVE TSAI, 38 / NEUROSURGEON
Spine surgeon passionate about research
Eve Tsai wants to fix the spinal cord. "And I want to do it tomorrow," she says definitively. "After I fix the spinal cord, I want to fix a brain."
She appears to be well on her way, although perhaps not as quickly as she would like.
Dr. Tsai was recruited by the Ottawa Hospital three years ago to spearhead research into spinal cord injuries. But besides being in the research lab, she is also in the operating room as a staff neurosurgeon as well as seeing patients in the emergency room, clinics and on hospital rounds. On top of all that, she is in the classroom as an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Tsai says she first became interested in nerve, brain and spinal cord injury, and regenerative research in high school when she had the opportunity to work in a chemistry lab with "an excellent mentor."
But she says she was also moved by the tragic consequences of spinal injuries, which usually strike young people. She remembers one patient in particular.
"He was a kid. He spent the whole summer working on a car with his father and he got into an accident with the car. His father saw him flip the car. Right now, when I see him in emergency, the only thing I can do is stabilize his spine. So I operate and I fix the spine . . . but what I want to do is fix the spinal cord."
Dr. Tsai gained early admittance to medical school at the University of Toronto in 1991 at age 19 and after only two years of undergraduate work and without having to complete a degree.
She began her residency in 1995 during which she also received a PhD from the Institute of Medical Science in 2004. She also completed a one-year spine fellowship at the University of Cleveland in 2005-06.
"In neurosurgery you really change things," she says. "I remember as a resident having some students with me and we saw this patient who was literally dying and in a deep coma. But because of our neurosurgical intervention, when the students saw him the next morning, he was nearly back to normal. The students were so amazed. In neurosurgery you can really make a huge difference in patients' lives. And that's extremely satisfying."
Dr. Tsai says she and her siblings - her sister, the anesthesiologist and her brother, the ear, nose and throat specialist - were encouraged from an early age "to do something important."
"My father came from Taiwan and my mother came from China with a suitcase and that was about it. They kept saying education is key to everything so the message was work hard and study hard."
Dr. Tsai says now she is particularly proud of establishing research relationships with high-school students.
"You've got potential and you've got bright minds. My hope is that you can encourage them to be the researchers of the future so that they can take the problems we can't fix now. The reason I am where I am now is because I had a good experience in high school with a mentor."
**********
BRADLEY FEDORA, 39 / OIL FIRM PRESIDENT
In Canada's western oil patch, there sometimes seem to be as many oil and gas service companies as there are corner stores in Calgary, each of them vying for their share of the business.
When Bradley Fedora became president and CEO of Canyon Services Group Inc. he knew his challenge would be to make Canyon stand apart from the crowd.
He appears to have done that. Canyon will report $100-million-plus in revenues this year, more than double the $48.1-million when he assumed the presidency in 2007. Average analysts' estimates also predict the company will turn a $6.3-million profit. In 2007, the company had a loss of $8.8-million.
At the same time he has managed to raise consolidated revenue per job by 25 per cent year over year and revenue per job in the hydraulic division by more than 50 per cent.
But that is what they pay him for, he says. "In 2007 they recruited me from Peters & Co. Ltd., where I was working as an investment banker," he says. "Canyon was looking for someone to lead the company through a financial restructuring and then drive growth.
"We have managed to do that, survived a difficult 18 months, and are now in an expansion mode."
What Canyon does is move in after a well is drilled and then use its proprietary technology to maximize flow from those wells by fracturing surrounding rock and then pumping in a mix of sand and liquids to force the oil and gas to the surface. Deep, not shallow, wells are the path to the future in Canadian oil fields as are unconventional wells - those drilled directionally and horizontally - he says.
"They require different skills and we recognized that early on and have developed them," he says.
************
KENT CAMPBELL, 39 / DEPUTY MINISTER
Since landing his first job with the Saskatchewan government a little more than a decade ago, Kent Campbell has risen quickly through the ranks and is now deputy minister of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Energy and Resources.
And to think it almost didn't happen. A native of Regina, Mr. Campbell moved to Ontario to complete his Master of Business Administration at Queen's University after acquiring two undergraduate degrees from the University of Regina. "After my MBA I was planning on staying in Ontario but I ran out of money," Mr. Campbell recalls with a laugh. So, he returned home, moved in with his parents, and started looking for a job. He remembers thinking that if nothing turned up in a couple of months, he'd seek his fortune elsewhere.
Fortunately in that summer of 1996, he landed a job as a budget analyst with the Treasury Board branch of the province's Ministry of Finance. Mr. Campbell went on to hold major economic development positions at several provincial departments and agencies. In 2007 he was appointed chief executive of the province's Forestry Secretariat and a year later to his current position, where he oversees the management of Saskatchewan's energy, mining and forestry sectors.
Mr. Campbell was recently appointed acting chief executive officer of Innovation Saskatchewan, a new agency responsible for implementing the province's innovation agenda.
His interest has spilled over into his volunteer pursuits. Mr. Campbell gives his time to the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. He spends time with students to give them a better understanding of what it's like to be a senior government official.
************
PAUL KHAIRY, 38 / CARDIOLOGIST
His patients' stories, Paul Khairy says, are where he finds inspiration for his work.
"Many were born with severe heart defects, defied all odds, and overcame tremendous obstacles," says Dr. Khairy of his patients with congenital heart disease.
But his interest in this field of cardiology came after a previous interest in arrhythmias. He had received a diploma in adult electrophysiology at the University of Montreal after his cardiology specialization.
Then Dr. Khairy went to Harvard University to get exposure to some cases of arrhythmia in patients with congenital heart disease. But since this had traditionally been a pediatric specialty, he was one of the few doctors who was interested in looking at the issue in adult patients.
"In many places, you would have 50-year-olds hospitalized in a pediatric centre to treat arrhythmia," he said.
After receiving a diploma in adult congenital heart disease, he returned to Montreal, where he had grown up, and became the director of the Adult Congenital Heart Centre at the Montreal Heart Institute. He also holds a Canada Research Chair in Electrophysiology and Adult Congenital Heart Disease.
There are now more adult congenital heart disease centres, he says, so there is now a critical mass of not only interested physicians but also of adult patients, so that meaningful research can be done in this area. He is involved in putting together research networks, in Canada and abroad.
Some first studies have been completed, and in the data analysis, Dr. Khairy's additional PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of Montreal comes into play.
Dr. Khairy is also an associate professor at the University of Montreal, and has co-authored a textbook.
Married with five children, including two sets of twins (he says his wife deserves a Top 40 Saints award), Dr. Khairy plays violin and guitar, and enjoys snowboarding.
************
ROB NORMANDEAU, 36 / BUSINESSMAN
When it comes to his company's business strategy, Rob Normandeau believes in depth over breadth, quality over quantity. So far, this less-is-more approach is yielding results at Clarke Inc., a publicly traded Halifax company that invests in undervalued businesses with the goal of realizing attractive returns as these companies grow.
Clarke Inc. began as a freight transportation company and continues to own four transportation businesses.
Since Mr. Normandeau took over as Clarke Inc.'s president in December, 2008, book value per share at the company has risen by about 50 per cent, even as Clarke reduced its management portfolio from 50 companies with total assets of $380-million in 2007 to 20 companies with total assets of $290-million in 2009, he says.
The goal, says the president and COO of Clarke Inc., is to have a core group of between 10 to 12 companies.
"We are doing more with less and have gone from doing a lot of things with a little bit of depth to doing fewer things with a lot of depth," he says. "Now we have very deep relationships with the businesses we're invested in and we're extremely active in executing strategic plans."
Mr. Normandeau, who worked as a lawyer in Toronto before joining Clarke in 2005, says he's a hands-on leader who likes being on the front lines of the business.
Yet somewhere in his busy schedule, Mr. Normandeau has found time to coach hockey, be a dad to three children aged 9, 7 and 5, and lend his expertise as a board member for a couple of not-for-profit organizations.
************
SUBODH VERMA, 39 / CARDIAC SURGEON
Subodh Verma, an expert on vascular biology and endothelial dysfunction, is a cardiac surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital and an associate professor of surgery and pharmacology at the University of Toronto.
Born in Vancouver, Dr. Verma spent his childhood in India and came back to Canada to do his master's and PhD at the University of British Columbia. He studied pharmacology under Dr. John McNeill, who coincidentally trained Dr. Verma's father in the same field in the 1970s. The younger Dr. Verma later studied for his MD and cardiology credentials at the University of Calgary.
He believes his interest in pharmacology stemmed from his father, who was killed in a train derailment in India many years earlier.
"My dad was one of Dr. McNeil's first graduate students and I ended up with him, as well. It was an unusual situation," he said. "He was a cardiac pharmacologist and I think I followed his footsteps and I always had a passion for medicine."
Dr. Verma, who holds a Canada Research Chair in atherosclerosis, also has a great passion for Canada.
"Canada has been such a great place for me. I was very fortunate to have been born here and come back and do my academics here," he said. "I feel Canada has given much more to me than I've given back. The wisdom and generosity of mentors let me move forward."
It is an exciting time to be in medicine, he adds.
"If you can do the research while having the honour of operating on human hearts, and fixing damaged hearts on a daily basis, then I think it's a unique privilege being both a scientist and a clinician."
Dr. Verma has two children, six-year-old Raj and three-year-old Meena, who get the lion's share of his attention outside of his work.
"I spend a lot of time with the kids and they've just caught the fishing bug."
*************
DANIEL DUROCHER, 38 / CANCER RESEARCHER
His work is painstakingly slow and time-consuming and it may be years before his research moves from the lab bench to the bedside.
But Daniel Durocher's research could shed light on how to reduce the capacity to repair in cancer cells that have been zapped with radiation. It could also uncover ways to help healthy cells damaged by radiation treatment repair themselves more quickly.
"Either way, it would be beneficial to the patient," says Dr. Durocher, who is senior investigator at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, in Toronto.
While his work may be slow going, it is not uneventful. In 2007, Mr. Durocher and two research trainees discovered a gene called RNF8, which helps guide a protein called BRCA1 to damaged DNA so it can make the necessary repairs. Mutated BRCA1 can cause breast cancer.
Working with researchers at the Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montréal, Dr. Durocher, who got a PhD at McGill University and did postdoctoral studies at the University of Cambridge in Britain, has also pioneered a method for studying the process of DNA damage and repair. By adding a reactive agent to cell culture from baker's yeast, it becomes easier to spot DNA damage.
His groundbreaking work has earned Dr. Durocher a number of awards.
But Dr. Durocher is quick to point out that he isn't a one-man research powerhouse.
"I have a team of technical staff of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows," he says. "So my role is really as an enabler and a communicator who writes papers for publications and goes to conferences around the world to talk about what we're doing here."
**************
RAHUL SINGH, 39 / PARAMEDIC, CHARITY FOUNDER
Angel of the disaster zones
It's early morning in hell: Port-au-Prince, Haiti, only days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the shantytown-scattered city.
And wedged into the middle of the dust, bodies, rubble and need, Rahul Singh has gathered a group together to talk strategy. The Haitian boys and young men are there to learn how to use units that will deliver 150,000 litres of clean water each day to thousands of people in churches, clinics and orphanages.
Using his rusty Quebecois-accented French, Mr. Singh fires them up, explaining why the band of water-bearers are so desperately needed. Everyone gives a cheer of "Sauvez au jour!" and they're off.
It's a moment Mr. Singh, a married Toronto paramedic who founded GlobalMedic in 1998, says he'll never forget.
"It's so cool to think that we can basically stop time, leave our normal lives, and bring hope in the form of field hospitals, water units and a contagious attitude of 'Don't worry, guys. We're going to do this!' It's just amazing," he says.
The GlobalMedic foundation is often one of the first on the ground at any disaster. More than 400 Canadian paramedics, firefighters, police officers, doctors and nurses volunteer to be deployed at the drop of a sombre newscast.
Under Mr. Singh's leadership, they've picked up the pieces in more than 35 countries ranging from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe, and often under extremely dangerous conditions. "It plays with your head. It's tough," he says. "But you've got to get your game face on, right? When you're there, you can't look like you're shocked or overwhelmed. You're the cavalry. You've got to deliver the goods."
Those goods multiply under his care, despite the fact that Mr. Singh had more chutzpah than NGO experience when he launched GlobalMedic. Although the organization typically only receives about a half-million dollars a year in funding, he finds ways to convert that money into millions of dollars in aid.
For instance, after Haiti, companies gave GlobalMedic generators, medicine and tents. The now defunct Skyservice charter airline offered space to fly the teams and hardware down. The total cost of the mission? $1,200.
For his work, he was named to the 2010 TIME 100, the magazine's list of the world's most influential people.
************
MARTIN LAVIGNE, 38 / BANKER
While Martin Lavigne was playing professional baseball, he learned a few things about being a successful banker and made a couple of important decisions that would cement his eventual career.
At 19, he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers' farm team and set his sights on the majors.
Thanks to some advice given to him by his father, he got the baseball organization to fund his university studies in the event he would not make it to the big leagues. After pitching for three years, the then-22-year-old imagined a scenario where he would be hammering in vain at this for several years, only to have to start looking for a new career in his thirties. "I had to turn the page," he said. So, while nursing a rotator cuff injury, he left baseball and enrolled in a business degree at Laval University in Quebec City.
In the 15 years since he graduated, he has risen to become Senior vice-president, Third-Party Business Solutions, National Bank of Canada.
He runs the bank's lucrative, 300-employee division that supplies third parties with banking products. The father of two lives and coaches little league in Boucherville, Queb.
*********
ROB DRYNAN, 37 / CAMP EXECUTIVE
When Rob Drynan threw in his résumé to become executive director of Camp Oochigeas back in 2003, he wasn't holding his breath. After all, the young marketing account executive lacked years of non-profit experience and classic credentials.
"I was a long shot for this job. I wasn't even on the original 'yes' pile," he says now from his Toronto office.
But what Mr. Drynan did have was a good word from the camp's director, and an unwavering passion for "Camp Ooch," a seemingly magical place where children with cancer can attend camp and year-round programs at no cost to their families. After volunteering one summer at the camp after his own father died of cancer, Mr. Drynan was hooked on the place's feel-good atmosphere.
"It just changed my life. Camp Ooch is the most positive, constructive place you will ever find," says Mr. Drynan, who is married with two children. The board of directors decided to take a chance on Mr. Drynan. It was a decision that changed the privately funded, volunteer-based organization.
Under his leadership, Camp Oochigeas, is no longer just a summer residential camp in Rosseau, Ont., about 2-1/2 hours north of Toronto, equipped to take even children needing chemotherapy and blood transfusions.
Instead, the concept of camp has been redefined. Full-time staff members run programs on the oncology floor at the Hospital for Sick Children. There are weekend camps, camps for bereaved siblings, day camps for 4- to 8-year-olds, and single-day urban outings for kids - and their worried parents - who don't feel comfortable leaving home for a whole week.
Then there's the camp's award-winning fund raising drive. After a revamp, the Sporting Life 10k saw a spike in revenue from about $96,500 in 2006 to $810,000 in 2009.
**********
ROBERT WILFUR, 38 / FINANCIAL EXECUTIVE
While still in his teens in his home town of Dawson Creek, B.C., Robert Wilfur entered a Vancouver Stock Exchange contest and turned $50,000 in hypothetical money into nearly $1-million within 90 days.
The VSE was so impressed, they offered him a part-time consulting job to help develop stock market educational material for high-school students across the province. Then, after graduation from high school, he spotted an ad in the Calgary Herald. Marathon Brokerage was opening a discount stock trading brokerage in Calgary and had two job openings. He drove to Calgary and landed one.
By age 20, he was buying and selling stocks, options and futures contracts for clients.
Now President and CEO of First Capital Management Ltd. in Calgary, and focusing on early-stage companies with proprietary knowledge or technology, Mr. Wilfur and First Capital have led groups of private investors into ventures such as Osum Oil Sands Corp., a private Alberta-based company focused on the development of oil sands properties.
Despite the pace of his business life, Mr. Wilfur insists on finding time for his wife Leslie Piper and five children.
*********
JOHN DI BERT, 38, / AVIATION EXECUTIVE
John Di Bert's father worked as a technician and draftsman at Pratt & Whitney Canada for 32 years. Almost a decade after his retirement, his son was headhunted while working at another firm. "You'll never believe where I'm going for a job interview," he told his father. "Pratt & Whitney."
Mr. Di Bert practically grew up at the airplane engine maker and knew it well. The chartered accountant was hired in 2001 and has risen in the organization to become Chief Financial Officer, Pratt & Whitney Canada. His father is proud, but lets him know that the 32 years he amassed trumps the impressive title his son has attained. "He still claims to know the company better than I do."
Mr. Di Bert leads a team of 300 finance specialists and helps chart the 80-year-old company's financial course. Before P&WC, Mr. Di Bert worked for three years in the '90s as a senior auditor at KPMG, while earning a graduate diploma in accountancy at Concordia University and earning his CA designation in 1999.
His fundamentals were taken to the next level at Rolls-Royce Canada, where he put together some major financial restructuring.
Early in his career at P&WC, he got to help bring into line a formerly state-owned Polish aerospace manufacturer, an acquisition of P&WC's parent company. He spent five months leading its financial integration.
He says it's not until a company can rely on all its financial reporting that it can properly plan and expand. When he goes into a boardroom, he says, he needs to know that he can completely trust the financial work of his team so that there are no surprises.
Despite the the intensity of the work, he keeps his weekends free for his wife and three children, and, of course, for his father to give him lessons on how to run the operation.
**********
IAN MANN, 39 / PHYSICIST
Understanding space storms key to future
Edmonton may seem an unlikely place from which to study space, especially space weather. But for Ian Mann and the other scientists and researchers on his 12-person team, it is near perfect.
"That is why I jumped at the chance to come here in 2003 from the University of York [in Britain]," says Dr. Mann.
First, he says there is proximity to the Northern Lights; those dancing ion showers that affect everything from radio transmission to tropical storms; second, Edmonton boasts a great university - the University of Alberta; and third, the future exploration and exploitation of space, as well as the effects of weather systems in space, that will likely have a profound effect on the future of the Far North.
"I don't know if the average Canadian is aware of it but Canada now has the fourth largest aerospace industry in the world," he says.
And Dr. Mann is at the heart of it. Among his titles are: Canada Research Chair in space physics, principal investigator of the Canadian Space Agency-funded CARISMA magnetometer array, principal investigator of proposed space agency small satellite mission orbitals and co-investigator with NASA's THEMIS project (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms).
In a nutshell, Dr. Mann uses data from ground observatories and satellites orbiting the earth to study how bursts of energy from the sun travel through space and effect the atmosphere. The goal is to find ways to predict space weather and how conditions starting about 100 kilometres above earth affect everything we send out into space.
That understanding is increasingly vital. We already depend on global positioning satellites to guide us from place to place here on earth, he points out. Satellites provide us with the global communications link on which business, government and even entertainment depend.
Unlike its terrestrial counterpart, space weather is created by energy from a wind of charged subatomic particles that blows past the Earth from the sun at speeds of around 400 to 700 kilometres per second. Massive explosions on the sun can buffet the Earth, generating vast magnetic storms, which can knock out satellites. In Polar regions, the effect of these space storms can be seen as spectacular displays of the Northern Lights.
NASA's THEMIS project shoots satellites into space disturbances to send back data that can then be analyzed so people like Dr. Mann can see what is happening out there.
He sees important implications for the future. Canada, he suggests, may turn to orbiting space stations as safe, secure and comfortable platforms from which to monitor Polar regions and guarantee its sovereignty over the Arctic. Similar stations could be equipped with new technology to remotely penetrate the ice and delve right into the geology of the ocean floor in the search for oil reserves and other recoverable minerals and resources.
"There are enormous future issues at stake in space, especially as it affects the North," says Dr. Mann. "Those space stations may indeed be the key to sovereignty, exploration and gaining a better understanding of global warming."
But before we can reach that stage we will have to understand the affects of the space environment on anything we send up there, he says. And that includes the space weather.
********
FRANÇOIS GRATTON, 39 / E-HEALTH
When he began working on a system that would help doctors, dentists and pharmacists exchange medical information electronically, François Gratton saw that the delivery of the data, whether it was patient files or pharmacy client records, lacked national consistency.
Five years ago, Mr. Gratton began to solve a lot of that fragmentation through his work with Emergis, which has since been renamed Telus Health. In less than four years, he spearheaded seven acquisitions of companies that were dealing in e-health records regionally, but with different protocols, and began to put together a cohesive electronic platform.
Mr. Gratton, senior vice-president, Sales and Marketing, Business Solutions, Telus Quebec in Montreal, is credited with building a national pharmacy database and setting in motion a national network run by Telus, which provides wireless technology, as well as information and communications solutions.
Telus Health went from no revenue and employees in 2004, to $46-million in revenues and 231 employees in 2009.
In acknowledging his success, the Harvard Business School grad, who also holds a law degree from the University of Montreal and is a married father of two, talks more about his team's efforts.
*********
PHILIP FAYER, 31 / FINANCIAL SERVICES
Philip Fayer chose an area usually taken up by the big banks: providing equipment and services to merchants so that they can process electronic payments.
He is president and CEO of Pivotal Payments in Montreal, which processes close to $7-billion of electronic transactions for tens of thousands of merchants across North America and employs more than 300 people.
The business of payment processing has its challenges. Small amounts are made on each transaction, competitive prices are the norm and some periods see dips in consumer spending. Despite all that, Mr. Fayer still managed to increase his business by 40 per cent last year, he says.
Part of that success comes from buying up other businesses doing similar work. He has made seven acquisitions over the past three years, allowing him to acquire a bigger slice of the market.
Mr. Fayer was born in Montreal and raised in Belgium and Israel, and attended Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Pennsylvania. Aside from being a pilot and a racecar driver, he also makes time for several charities, including those that help youth find jobs and those that fund cancer research.
***********
JOHN VALLIANT, 39 / MEDICAL IMAGING
John Valliant likes riding "the wave of the future."
As founder and head of the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization in Hamilton, Ont., he says that future lies in molecular imaging to detect disease.
"With an x-ray image you see bones. You see anatomy," he says. "With molecular imaging, what you see is changes in how your body functions and the change in biochemistry. Using that technique you can see diseases really early. To be able to do that you need something called a molecular imaging probe, a chemical compound you inject in a patient and it seeks out the site of disease and then you can detect where that goes."
Dr. Valliant says the centre's research and development into those probes is particularly critical as hospitals around the world scramble for dwindling supplies of medical isotopes used to diagnose, monitor or treat cancer, heart or brain disease.
Dr. Valliant is an associate professor in the departments of Chemistry and Medical Physics and Applied Radiation Sciences at McMaster University. He is also the director of Isotope Research at the McMaster Nuclear Reactor.
He lives in Ancaster, Ont., with his wife and three children - a daughter who is 6 and three-year-old twin girls.
*************
MARGARET MCGEE, 39 / GAMING EXECUTIVE
When Margaret McGee walked into the gaming industry five years ago, she had hardly any experience of gambling or even buying lottery tickets. But, from the start, she was committed to the principles of corporate social responsibility and determined to make the industry more responsive to the needs of the community. That commitment led to Nova Scotia achieving several milestones in responsible gambling and being recognized as a global leader.
Ms. McGee wanted to address the growing numbers of underage youth who were using online gambling sites. "We did a study that showed youth were gambling three times more often than adults," says Ms. McGee, a former radio and television journalist who hails from Sutherland's River, N.S.
In response to the problem, Ms. McGee, vice-president, Business Innovation of Nova Scotia Gaming Corp. [NSGC], led the development of Betstopper, filtering software that is designed to keep kids off gambling websites and alert parents if children try to gain access.
Ms. McGee was also responsible for leading the NSGC in becoming the first organization in the North American gambling industry to adopt a Corporate Social Responsibility Charter. "All the operators in the province signed on," she said.
Ms. McGee, who is a Harvard Business School grad, helped organize last year's Bust a Move for Breast Health.
**********
DAVID HENDERSON, 37 / INVESTMENT
David Henderson wants to bring water to a thirsty planet.
Now managing director of XPV Capital Corp., Mr. Henderson founded the company that specializes in providing investment funding for international water infrastructure projects.
Upon leaving Ryerson University, where he studied entrepreneurship and enterprise development in the early '90s, Mr. Henderson met businessman G. Kingsley Warde, now the chairman of VRG Capital, whom Mr. Henderson considers his mentor, and went to work for him.
With the idea of striking out on his own, Mr. Henderson started XPV Capital in 2001, initially to explore different opportunities like angel investing and consulting.
"The vision for XPV was that we wanted to build a differentiated investment firm and, in order to do that, we looked at different sectors where we could build a specialized firm that focused on it. We ended up selecting water in 2005."
"Five years ago, people weren't really thinking about it and, from an investment perspective, it is now going from the fringe to the mainstream," he said.
In the past year, the company has launched an institution investment fund worth over $100-million.
Mr. Henderson and his wifelive with their daughters, Sophia, 18 months, and Isabella, 5, in Oakville, Ont.
***********
MICHAEL POWER, 38 / CANCER RESEARCH
Michael Power was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers in 1990.
But his focus changed almost overnight, at the age of 20, when his father was diagnosed with lymphoma and he went home to help out.
His father died in the spring of 1991 and Mr. Power had to decide whether to get back into hockey, or into the health field and cancer care. "I made a deliberate decision at that time to walk away from hockey."
By 2007, he founded the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute (TBRRI), a public-private partnership, securing more than $100-million in government and industry seed funding. He is now regional vice-president, Cancer Care Ontario, and Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre chief executive officer, TBRRI.
The TBRRI seeks to improve cancer diagnostics, using real-time imaging processes with radioactive isotopes, and looking at what happens to a tumour through chemotherapy.
Mr. Power coaches hockey and he and his wife have a seven-year old-daughter, Grace, and five-year-old son, Carson.
*********
CAMERON FOWLER, 38 / FINANCIAL SERVICES
After earning an honours degree in international politics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., Cameron Fowler travelled to Nepal, where he volunteered at a leper colony. He came back to Canada and worked in Toronto for four years - he was a policy adviser for two years to Dianne Cunningham, who was then Ontario's minister of intergovernmental affairs.
In 1999, Mr. Fowler, who has an MBA from the London Business School at the University of London in the United Kingdom, became general manager at Delano Technology, a Toronto-based marketing solutions firm later acquired by an American company. Delano soon transferred Mr. Fowler to London, from where he worked to develop markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
He is now executive vice-president and head of strategic management and corporate marketing at BMO Financial Group in Toronto.
Mr. Fowler says working in international markets has taught him to adapt quickly to different cultures - a handy skill in his current role.
****************
DOMINIQUE BROWN, 31, VIDEO GAME ENTREPRENEUR
Avid video gamer pressed play
When he was an 11-year-old growing up in Quebec City, Dominique Brown told his mother he was going to run his own video-game company. It wasn't the idle boast of a boy who spent a lot of time gaming. By the time he was 16, he had a business license and he incorporated just before he turned 18.
"I've had this passion for entrepreneurship for as long as I can remember," said Mr. Brown, who is now founder and CEO of Beenox. "For some reason, it just stuck and I couldn't think of anything else. By the time I was in high school, I was learning how to program software on my own and I was writing games on the Internet."
Financial backing came initially from his parents, who watched how he progressed in his ideas and business plans, with his father taking his plan to an accountant for scrutiny.
The result, Beenox, the video-game development studio, was started when Mr. Brown turned 21, with six staff. He was more than ready. "I was super convinced of my ability to [succeed] and the reason for that is that I had no idea what I was doing. It is always easy to feel confident when you don't know what to expect," he said.
"We started doing games for Macintosh computers and eventually we created a specialty, where we would take a game that was working on a given platform and we'd convert it to other platforms, like PC to Macintosh or console systems." This skill led to Beenox becoming a leader in the industry for such transferences.
By 2005, the company was purchased by American interactive entertainment giant Activision Blizzard, and is now divided into two studios, the first concentrating on full-scale game development and the second on the quality assurance of games, testing games created by both Beenox and Activision.
Today, the company is nearing 390 employees. In April, Mr. Brown was presented with an award for outreach outside Quebec by Quebec City's Chamber of Commerce for being the local entrepreneur with the most international outreach.
Mr. Brown lives in the rural idyll of the protected agricultural island Île d'Orléans on the St. Lawrence River, and spends his downtime with his three young children, twin six year olds and a three-year-old.
*****
ERIC CHOUINARD, 38 / TECH CEO
Eric Chouinard regularly arrives at work before 5 a.m. Those quiet hours of the morning give his mind time to wander into big-idea territory. He knows that once people start arriving in the office, fires need to be put out and decisions need to be made.
A little Zen time is in order. He is co-founder, president and CEO of iWeb Group Inc. in Montreal, and his company has been expanding at break-neck speed. More than 20,000 businesses around the world are clients, and iWeb provides them with off-site IT support and reams of technical infrastructure.
In 2009, iWeb earned $27.1-million in revenues, nearly doubling its gross take each year since 2004. That five-year growth was pretty well planned out. Mr. Chouinard is a big believer in having a long-term strategy and sharing it with his employees.
He and partner Martin Leclair started the firm in 1996 and have been able to regularly expand their business, even through the tech bust at the beginning of the decade, to the economic crisis of 2008.
Married with three children, Mr. Chouinard credits his wife, whom he started dating at 18, for turning around his life from one where he was failing in school to eventually running a firm that is making important inroads in Brazil, Russia, India and China, among the 145 countries it serves.
But no matter what delegation he may be a part of or new data centre he is building, Mr. Chouinard finds his quiet moments out of the office so that he can help deliver better things inside his workplace. "When I'm outside, I'm inspired."
**********
KEN TRAVIS, 37 / OIL AND GAS EXECUTIVE
Ken Travis, 38, is one of those remarkable success stories where a young man starts with little but his enthusiasm, keen intellect and a drive to succeed and parlays them into millions.
In Mr. Travis's case he went to work in Alberta's oil fields right out of high school 20 years ago, worked his way up to director of operations at a major oil and gas service company, came up with a way to make wells more productive and in 2003, with a partner, Lyle Filliol, started his own company.
He is now president and CEO of Strata Energy Services Inc. of Red Deer, Alta. The company will do $50-million in business this year.
Strata's forte is extracting the maximum oil and gas in so-called "underbalanced" wells (referring to the way pressure is unequal in a certain drilling process).
Mr. Travis and Mr. Filliol saw a way to better protect the integrity of the rock formation and increase yield. They raised $200,000 from family and friends and by the end of their first year in business had sold a pair of their new systems into the Middle East. "Word of mouth about how well this system worked started orders coming in," he says. "The business just took off."
In fact, Strata's approach to maximizing yield from oil and gas wells has proved so popular that, despite last year's recession, company revenues rose by 15 per cent.
"Anyone who was drilling came to us," he says. "We picked up about 90 per cent of the business in Canada. Today even our largest competitor - a company that does about $1.5-billion a year - buys its equipment from us."
*********
BARRY SYMONS, 39 / SOFTWARE CEO
Barry Symons is an admitted sports junkie. But the challenge of taking Jonas Software to the top of its game means he is now more obsessed with making it easier for other people to book their tennis courts, tee-off times or even buying a round of drinks post-game.
"You think of any aspect of the business of a club, we automate that aspect of the business," says Mr. Symons, who is CEO of Jonas Software says. "Name a club you find prestigious and chances are they are using our software."
Mr. Symons joined the software world after getting an Honours Business degree with distinction at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., in 1993. He later earned his chartered accountant designation.
He enjoyed some aspects of being a chartered accountant, but wanted more exposure to the other requirements of building a successful business.
Mr. Symons got that wider exposure after joining Jonas's parent company, Constellation Software Inc., in 1997.
But Mr. Symons says he was still looking to move out of the financial role and into operations. He got that opportunity in 2007, when Jonas - a subsidiary of Constellation, based in Richmond Hill, Ont. - needed a new CEO.
"It's the ultimate challenge, because you're not just focused in one area. You have to try to be an expert in all aspects of the business."
Mr. Symons still tries to get his sports fix where and when he can, although these days it's more likely to be coaching his seven-year-old son's baseball and hockey teams. He and his wife also have three-year-old twin boys.
***********
JAMIE KING, 36 / SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
Banking on success that's Rock-solid
Jamie King has to laugh when he hears competitors say that being located in St. John's, Nfld., means that Verafin Inc., is at a disadvantage in meeting the security needs of American banks.
"They try to use that when we're competing on deals," says Mr. King, who founded Verafin in 2003 with two engineering colleagues at Memorial University. "In the U.S., they say things like, 'This is a company up in Canada. What can they know?' But in the last seven years, we've become real experts in the field. What puts our competitors in their place is the fact that we have 500 happy customers."
Verafin occupies a highly specialized niche providing software programs that help banks and credit unions across North America monitor incidents of fraud and money-laundering activities. The privately owned firm has grown from three people to a 90-employee operation that generates annual revenues of about $10-million.
Verafin succeeded, says Mr. King, because it began by focusing on developing solutions for Canadian credit unions. "That success carried over into the U.S. market about a year and a half ago, where we were endorsed by the credit union associations," says Mr. King, adding that his firm serves mid-tier banks with up to $10-billion (U.S.) in assets. "We were able to compete head-to-head against competitors and win 75 per cent of the deals."
Based on algorithms, Verafin's software has uncovered many cases of fraud that are executed through so-called "cheque-kiting" schemes and identity theft involving debit and credit cards.
"Many of our customers have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in preventing debit card fraud," says Mr. King. One notable case involved helping a Louisiana credit union prevent a $144,000 loss due to a cheque-kiting operation, where money is withdrawn from accounts without sufficient funds by writing cheques between different accounts, inflating their value until the scheme is discovered.
Mr. King stumbled on the market niche by accident. Seven years ago, he was a PhD student at Memorial University, working on robotics and artificial intelligence applications, developing robotic vehicles for use in mines.
He met an investor, David Kelly, who encouraged him to use the same principles of pattern recognition to detect money laundering.
**********
BRIAN BOULANGER, 34 / PRIVATE INVESTMENT
If there's anything that Brian Boulanger has learned from his many years of volunteer work, it's that you get back more than you give.
"It's reciprocal," says Mr. Boulanger, senior vice-president of Calgary-based ARC Financial Corp., a private investment management company in the energy sector.
The Calgary native first became involved with the United Way of Calgary and Area in 2005. He served as chair of the agency's board in 2008 and continues to sit as a member of the board. He also chairs its strategy development and volunteer engagement committees and he sits on its investment committee.
"I have certainly grown as a person and as a businessman from my involvement with the United Way," says the father of four. "I've met and worked with people I wouldn't have otherwise. It's also taught me how to collaborate. ... It made me a better person."
Mr. Boulanger completed a degree in business administration at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in 1997. He moved back to Calgary after graduating and that same year he was hired at ARC as an investment analyst. In less than a decade he moved up to his current position of senior vice-president.
********
WILLIAM ANDREW, 39 / ENTREPRENEUR
The moment William Andrew stepped off the plane in Vancouver a week before the Olympics, he knew something big - really big - was happening for his company.
He watched as airport staff rushed around in official Olympic clothing. He saw piles of Olympic shirts, pins, jackets, hats and mitts stock airport retail shelves. "I got off that plane and thought, 'Oh my God, I just walked into our showroom!'," he says.
Mr. Andrew, the founder of Elevate Sport Inc., and president & chief operating officer of affiliated company Trimark Sportswear Group, was at the helm when Elevate won the activewear licence for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games, beating out many better-known companies.
Not bad for an art teacher's son who started silk screening logos on T-shirts for his friends in high school. As an engineering student at Queen's University, he created his first business, WAC Sportswear, out of his basement so he could go to school. Although the company eventually went under, he took what he learned and eventually landed the coveted Olympic deal for his new company. Being under the radar actually worked to Mr. Andrew's advantage, as the Olympic committee didn't want to partner with a brand that put itself first. Part of his pitch? "You don't know us and that's a good thing," says the marathon runner and Toronto father of two.
******
LARRY TOMEI, 39 / MUTUAL FUNDS MANAGER
Larry Tomei likes to do business the way his father ran a barber shop for 46 years.
"Every client is important," he says. "I learned at an early age from my dad that if you have the right team and you put your clients first and do everything you can to make them happy, then everything else takes care of itself."
Mr. Tomei, senior vice-president, Central Canada, CIBC Retail Markets, graduated from York University's Schulich School of Business with a Bachelor of Business Administration and an MBA in 1994 and joined CIBC as a product manager of mutual funds.
In 1995 CIBC Mutual Funds had negative net sales and was a lagging performer in the industry. By 2004, Mr. Tomei and his team had succeeded in making CIBC one of the largest mutual fund companies in Canada.
Mr. Tomei, of Toronto suburb Woodbridge, met his wife of 10 years, Kim, at CIBC. They now have two children, a five-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son.
Mr. Tomei's community work includes sitting on the foundation board of Humber River Hospital.
"That's always been my hospital," he says. "I wanted something that I had a personal connection to."
***********
OLGA KOVALCHUK, 39 / BIOMEDICAL RESEARCHER
Probing Chernobyl's genetic legacy
Olga Kovalchuk was a 16-year-old high-school student in Ukraine in 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant accident released a toxic cloud of radioactive particles over the country.
That event, one of the world's worst nuclear disasters, had a profound influence on Dr. Kovalchuk's future career.
The University of Lethbridge professor, who grew up about 600 kilometres from the site of the accident, recalls her father, a biochemist, coming to find her at school one rainy day shortly after the blast to warn her to stay indoors. "My Dad tried to find me and tell me, 'You shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be in this rain,' " she says.
Dr. Kovalchuk completed her MD at the Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University in Ukraine, and her PhD at Ukrainian National Scientific Centre of Medical Genetics and Hygiene. While doing research at university, she met geneticists who were studying the health effects of radiation exposure caused by the blast. She had found her niche.
She met and married her husband, Igor, who is currently also a scientist at the University of Lethbridge, and the two emigrated to Switzerland in 1996 to work at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. In 2001 they moved to the Alberta city to take up their current posts. The university had two research positions available and they "were a perfect fit," Dr. Kovalchuk says. "It was serendipity."
Nowadays, the focus of Dr. Kovalchuk's research is on epigenetics, the study of how genes are affected by environmental, lifestyle and other factors, and the role that epigenetics plays in cancer development. She hopes her research will help the victims of the Chernobyl disaster, and others, by identifying individuals who may be predisposed to developing cancer. "If we can do that, then we can determine what changes they need to make or find medical interventions," before the disease occurs, she explains.
Dr. Kovalchuk, who holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Chair in Gender, Sex and Health, also researches how male and female responses to radiation exposure differ.
*********
LEONARDO SIMON, 38 / CHEMICAL ENGINEER
Leonardo Simon can be credited with making plastics a little more natural.
Prof. Simon, associate professor, chemical engineering, University of Waterloo, is renowned for research that is starting to revolutionize the composition of plastics and is bringing commercial interests to his door.
Thanks to his work, inedible agricultural crop waste, like wheat straw and other plant materials that are often burned in the field, can now be mixed with polypropylene. The organic waste replaces heavy calcium carbonate or chalk, which have traditionally acted as fillers in plastics.
The result? A lighter plastic made from materials normally burned in the fields or otherwise scrapped.
"The technology can be implemented in a much larger, global scale. The nice thing about wheat straw is that it is found in all the populated areas in the world," he said. "From every angle we look at this technology it looks promising."
Car maker Ford took note, since polypropylene is a plastic widely used in vehicles, in bumpers, fascias, door panels, and dashboards. The new plastic has been found to be of equal strength to its predecessor, but because it's lighter it makes vehicles more fuel efficient.
Ford began using the material in its crossover vehicle the Flex, made in Oakville, Ont., in 2009.
Prof. Simon is particularly pleased that it means field straw from fields around Waterloo is being transformed into vehicles.
There has been interest in the technology overseas.
Prof. Simon grew up in the state of Rio Grande Do Sul in southern Brazil, where he completed his master's degree in chemical engineering and his PhD in material science. He came to the University of Waterloo in 1999 as a visiting PhD scholar, and was invited back by the university in 2001 to teach. He became a Canadian citizen in 2004.
His wife Josephine teaches at Waterloo's School of Pharmacy, and they have has a three-year-old son, Daniel.
************
IKE AHMED, 38 / EYE SURGEON
When Ike Ahmed isn't fielding questions from patients and med students about all things eyeball, he often finds himself answering one more: Does he ever sleep?
"My fellows asked me that just this morning," he says, sounding sheepish. "Last night they got an e-mail from me at 12:30 in the morning - and then another one at 5:30. They wondered if I'd set a timer."
For the record, the only timer Dr. Ahmed sets is his internal clock. The world renowned glaucoma, cataract and anterior segment surgeon, who lives and works in the Toronto area, is juggling a full workload with his family life. So not surprisingly, the only time he can fit in the odd e-mail is in the wee hours.
And no wonder. Dr. Ahmed is already recognized as one of the world's most experienced complex eye surgeons, known not only for being at the leading edge of innovative treatments, but actually developing new techniques and surgical devices. (Other eye surgeons now reach for Ahmed Diamond Knives and the Ahmed Segment, for instance.) He's also on the editorial board of six ophthalmology journals and has given more than 550 scientific presentations in Canada and around the world.
And that's when the assistant professor at the University of Toronto and clinical assistant professor at the University of Utah isn't training glaucoma specialists, residents and med students at his large tertiary glaucoma/cataract practice or performing surgery at two hospitals. Patient comments on an online rating site include "caring," "compassionate" and "cheerful."
Dr. Ahmed, who was born in Prince Albert, Sask., says it's important to make the patient feel at ease, since the procedures can be risky.
"Many times you have one chance of getting it right," he says of eye surgery. "You're working with tissue layers that are literally one tenth of a millimetre."
He and his wife, Ruby, a family doctor, have three sons, Yusuf, Aadam and Issa.
*******
LINDA CAMPBELL, 39 / AQUATIC RESEARCHER
For Linda Campbell, a day on the lake can result in a cooler full of Lake Ontario fish to analyze back in the lab. Or it can mean feeling her ship tilt and pitch as she struggles to pull in a 60-kilogram Nile perch in Africa.
Considering her work as an assistant professor, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Ecosystem Health at Queen's University, Dr. Campbell is bound to have her share of fish tales. Yet it's the biologist's research into the effects of humans, pollution, contamination and invasive species that may just change the way we view the Great Lakes from now on.
Dr. Campbell, who lives in Kingston, Ont., heads out a few times a year to Lake Ontario with her students to collect samples of foreign parasites, invasive species and contaminated fish.
"We're using this lake as a test tube to predict what is going to happen in the future," says Dr. Campbell through an interpreter, as she is Deaf.
One project involves tracking a new invasive species from Europe called hemimysis, commonly known as "bloody red shrimp."
Two years ago, only a few were discovered in the lake system, but that's no longer the case.
"It spreads like wildfire," says Dr. Campbell. "There is obviously going to be an impact. We just don't know what that impact is going to be."
When she's not teaching four courses and overseeing research students in her lab, Dr. Campbell can be found online with her husband, Dr. Rob Thacker, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Computational Astrophysics at St. Mary's University.
Their blog, Ecogirl & Cosmoboy, sets out to prove that everything, from the biggest galaxy to the smallest critter, is connected in some way.
