Sarah Brazauskas always knew she didn’t want a one-size-fits-all career. As it turns out, the 27-year-old graduate of Red River College’s Graphic Design program walked into a dream job that could have been custom-tailored just for her.

As the first full-time Storyboot School coordinator for Aboriginal footwear phenomenon Manitobah Mukluks, Brazauskas pours herself into her work heart and sole, bringing together Aboriginal artists and students in the community and at the company’s Point Douglas headquarters.

“We’re teaching the art of mukluk- and moccasin-making to Aboriginal youth in an effort to keep the tradition alive within the community and spark the next generation of crafters and artists,” she says.

The job ticks all the boxes on the fulfillment front: Creatively satisfying, it has positive social implications and it resonates on a personal level too, connecting Brazauskas with her Aboriginal roots.

The school grew out of the Storyboot Project founded by Manitobah Mukluks CEO Sean McCormick. Storyboots are moccasins, mukluks and other craftworks created by Aboriginal artists who receive 100% of the proceeds from sales. Starting in 2013, classes were organized under an informal management framework, and Brazauskas took on the role of coordinator last April.

Six months later, she was featured in Maclean’s magazine’s Cool Jobs series. The experience was humbling — Brazauskas doesn’t like to be in the spotlight — but it was exciting as well. Her mom Jocelyn bought several copies of the magazine and it was posted in the Rennie Hotel, making her a minor celebrity in her small hometown on the outskirts of Whiteshell Provincial Park.

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In an era where vehicles practically drive themselves, you’d think the automotive trade might have evolved with the technology. But female mechanics are still almost as rare as flying cars.

Elaine Lagasse is hoping to change that.

A graduate of Red River College’s Automotive Service Educational program, Lagasse is also RRC’s first female automotive instructor. She sees the number of female students walking in – or perhaps kicking down – the door of the Automotive Technician Certificate program, and it’s not pretty.

“We probably average three or four per cent women,” she says. “So (in a program with 100 students), that’s three or four women. The numbers are very, very low.”

Lagasse was the only woman in her program’s class of 2004. She graduated with top marks and received the Ken Preboy Memorial Award before moving on to become a Red Seal Automotive Technician for four years, then landed her current position as an RRC instructor in 2008.

“There’s no reason why the numbers haven’t picked up more than they have,” Lagasse says of the program’s relative lack of female students. “I think the big thing is just breaking the barrier and realizing that there’s nothing that makes (the automotive trade) more suited for men versus women.” Read More →

There’s no dust settling on Winnipeg eco-entrepreneur Todd Burns.

The globetrotting president of Cypher Environmental has travelled far since he graduated from RRC’s Business Administration program in 2001, taking Cypher’s dust-suppression, road-stabilization and water-treatment products to dozens of countries.

“The last time I counted it was well above 35, so I’m probably around 41 or 42 right now. Last year I went to a few countries for the first time ever — Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia.”

Even jet-lagged, the 34-year-old entrepreneur is usually the freshest face in the room wherever business takes him, whether he’s networking with local, national and international trade groups, or meeting with Cypher’s distributors in Asia, Africa, Europe, the U.S., Mexico and South America.

“Our distributors worldwide, the owners of those businesses have children my age,” he laughs.

Burns was by far the youngest executive invited to fly to Mexico with former prime minister Stephen Harper to attend the Three Amigos Trade Summit in February 2014 — an “awesome” experience that came three months before he joined a youthful peer group at a meet-and-greet with Prince Charles at AssentWorks during a whirlwind royal tour. And he was among a handful of local business owners asked to take part in a federal round-table on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Last year, he returned to RRC to speak to students in the International Business program, and he’s collaborating with RRC staff and students to further develop Cypher’s environmentally friendly dust-suppressant Dust Stop, with the support of a $65,000 Applied Research and Development grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

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There are those who prefer to make the news, and those who prefer to be the news. Red River College graduate Stephanie Scherbain knows which side she’s on.

“I wanted to be a part of the news, and not write the news,” says Scherbain, a graduate of RRC’s Creative Communications program. “I felt like I could make a difference by being in an organization that had initiatives and had something for journalists to write about.”

Mission accomplished. After studying both journalism and public relations in her first year of CreComm, Scherbain chose to major in PR during the program’s second year. She graduated in 2008 with all of the tools she needed to fulfill her career goals – and fast.

She landed a marketing job at St. Vital Centre in 2009 before assuming her current position as marketing and communications coordinator for the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone (BIZ) in 2010. There she shines a spotlight on the bustling area of downtown Winnipeg, by maintaining the organization’s website, working with businesses to create events, organizing culinary tours, and even playing tour guide herself on walking tours of the historic district.

“We feel that the Exchange is in the midst of a renaissance,” she says.

Scherbain credits her practical and hands-on CreComm education for giving her all of the tools she requires to do her job, from technical and presentation skills to TV and radio industry insight.

“It gives you the ability to think from different perspectives,” she says. “If you want to be on the news, then you’ve got to have something newsworthy. But then you have to think from the TV perspective, the visual perspective. It allows you to adapt to the different industries to make it a bigger, better picture.” Read More →

He’d felt the strange woman’s approving gaze throughout the day as he filmed the centennial celebration at Nelson House, Man.

But Sean Parenteau, one of the first-ever graduates of Red River College’s Aboriginal Broadcast Training Initiative (ABTI), had no idea she’d give him the answer to a question he’d pondered since childhood.

“That thing you’re doing with your camera, that’s your gift in life,” the woman said, after tapping Parenteau on the shoulder. He thanked her and asked for her name. Instead, she hugged him, then walked away.

“I turned and looked at my camera,” says Parenteau, “and just started crying.”

Rewind the tape 31 years, to find five-year-old Parenteau in Duck Bay, Man. — a Métis community about 450 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg — in the throes of a mysterious ailment that caused him to have visions of blue whales and killer whales, both of which represent Mother Earth’s clans.

A local Elder named Nora helped cure him. When he was 11, he went to visit her at her cabin in the woods, hoping she could tell him what had happened. She told him he had a gift he was too young to comprehend, but in time he’d get it back.

The Elder died years later when Parenteau was 19; he never got the chance to talk with her again. Of that fateful woman from the Nelson House shoot, he now says, “I believe it was Nora the Elder that had passed on, coming back to give me my gift.” Read More →

An old show-biz adage suggests you should never work with children or animals. Red River College grad Ryan Price apparently didn’t get the message: he works with both, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

The local children’s magician and entertainer started out 10 years ago doing magic tricks and making balloon animals while working towards his Business Administration diploma at Red River College. While his fellow students did homework or enjoyed a meal on their lunch breaks, Price would walk over to visit nearby toy stores or magic shops.

“As a kid I had a magic set and I was always interested in entertaining,” says the 2007 grad. “But I didn’t really get into it until I was in college, when I saw a magician perform there, and thought that was something I could attempt.”

Going from dabbling in magic to making it his career was a very quick process for Price. Within a year he was a full-time magician for hire, doing a couple hundred shows a year — mostly at birthday parties and daycares — thanks to a website he built right after he graduated.

Price has since built himself a niche market, creating and performing assembly programs  at schools, daycares and libraries around Manitoba and in nearby provinces. His shows incorporate an educational element, with themes such as A Reading Adventure, Wacky Science Show, and Going Green, which focuses on recycling and protecting the environment.

Each show is different. For example, before he performs the reading-themed show for kids in kindergarten to Grade 6, he finds out some of the books they’ve read lately, so he can weave them into his show, delighting the young spectators. Read More →

Joe Clark spent his teenage years on the soccer pitch — not whiling away the hours in his parents’ garage, pulling wrenches to restore an old car to its former glory.

It’s not the usual backstory you’d expect from a guy who now works as a technician for Mercedes-Benz Winnipeg (MBW), where Teutonic dream machines with price tags north of six figures aren’t uncommon.

Reflecting on his path to MBW, which began with Red River College’s Automotive Technician Certificate program, Clark himself tends to agree.

“When I started, I was about as green as you could get,” says Clark, 22, who used the certificate program as the Level 1 equivalent in his four-year apprenticeship training.

“[Auto tech.] was just a really applicable skill that I was curious about. It just so happened to work out for me. I was pretty lucky.”

But it took more than good fortune to transform Clark from a neophyte mechanic to a full-time member of the tech team at one of the city’s newest and most state-of-the-art auto shops.

For that, he credits his instructors at RRC and the program they’ve developed — a mix of theory and hands-on learning in local shops — which he says gives students the skills they need, whether they work on one brand of vehicle, as he does, or a variety. Read More →

Arhben Tumambing was never certain what he wanted to do.

The Red River College graduate went to university after high school, and from there worked a string of what he describes as unfulfilling jobs.

While he wasn’t sure, career-wise, where he wanted to go, Tumambing — a 2014 grad of RRC’s Administrative Assistant program — says he’s always had an interest in how systems and society function.

“I just like poking problems and seeing how things work,” he says.

Tumambing now works as a recruitment clerk with the Province of Manitoba, where he was hired after completing a practicum as part of his RRC studies.

His family moved to Winnipeg from the Philippines from he was 12, and Tumambing grew up in the North End.

“ I think I was kind of a lost child at some points,” he says.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree and double-majoring in sociology and developmental studies, he worked a string of minimum wage jobs because he couldn’t find something in his field.

“My mom was more of a practical person; she was like, ‘Here’s a less-than-six-month course going on.’ She said ‘Hey, that will propel you to even greater heights and experiences.’” Read More →

Brett Zahari welcomed his “baby”— a newly-opened downtown doughnut shop called Bronuts — into the world nine weeks ago. His baby daughter, Emelyn, arrived a week later.

Yet the 23-year-old says he was unfazed by the added stress of navigating both his café’s opening and the arrival of his first child.

“I don’t know any different,” says Zahari, from a table at the Exchange District hot spot.

The way he sees it, opening a business is tough — with a newborn or without — and the demands it creates are par for the course. “You don’t have time for the stuff you’d normally have time for,” Zahari admits. “You prioritize. It’s fun.”

He partnered in the venture with his brother, Dylan, and his wife, Meghan. In less than a year (from May 2014 to April 2015) the trio came up with doughnuts as a business idea, haggled and wooed their landlord for their must-have Bannatyne and King location, burned the candle at both ends balancing day jobs while turning empty space into a charming little café, quit their day jobs, took on considerable debt, and became bakers, marketers, managers, bosses and all the “other duties as assigned” of opening your own business.

In spite of the hectic pace, Zahari, appears to be having a good time. He’s quick with a wave, wink or a hello to customers coming and going. Building relationships, he says, is fundamental to success.

“The people around you are what are going to make you successful,” he says. “The connections that you have with people, that’s how you become successful in life.” Read More →

For Robyn Clisby, a day at the office always includes the unexpected.

The early childhood educator admits she can’t always predict what the children she works with are going to say. During a lunch-hour discussion about different kinds of food, one child piped up that his mommy is “really good at ordering pizza.”

“It’s so innocent,” says Clisby with a laugh.

A team leader at Cairns Children’s Centre Inc., Clisby says channeling this childhood innocence into learning is her passion. She applied at the Winnipeg centre while still a teenager eight years ago, after seeing a posting on a neighbourhood billboard.

Ever since, she’s been helping kids discover their world through play. When it comes to early childhood education, spontaneity is key, she says.

“Children show interest in the things they want to learn about,” says Cairn, 26. “The adults are there to support them.” Read More →