Landing a job out of university was never a problem for Suzanne Gessler. Landing a job she truly enjoyed? Well, that was another story.

It wasn’t until the “lifelong student” graduated from Red River College’s Professional Baking and Patisserie program in 2014 that she was able to create her own personal recipe for success: The Pennyloaf Bakery.

Gessler opened the Corydon Avenue shop specializing in authentic sourdough-style breads in October 2015, a year after she graduated from RRC. It’s a far cry from her former jobs as a city planner, social worker and social policy writer – all government gigs that were well-paid and stable with regular hours and lengthy vacations.

In other words: They were everything owning your own bakery is not.

But that’s OK with Gessler, who’s learned that rolling the dough itself is a better fit for her than rolling it in under somebody else’s watch.

“My dad got sick and passed away, and I got burned out to no end,” says Gessler of the moment she felt she needed to switch career paths, after 13 challenging years working to improve the homeless population’s housing conditions.

“After so many years of trying to do whatever I could to help out on poverty issues in the city, I’d kind of had it. I’d seen so many rounds of government funding come through and not a lot of change. Maybe there was some change, but I was too mired in it.” Read More →

Paul Cantin doesn’t want to set the world on fire — quite the opposite, in fact. His work on New Flyer Industries’ battery-electric buses could help put the brakes on global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout North America.

A 2004 graduate of RRC’s Mechanical Engineering Technology program, Cantin is a project leader in the New Product Development department at New Flyer, the continent’s leading manufacturer of transit buses, including increasingly lean-and-clean natural gas, hybrid and electric options.

The 35-year-old father of two says with 70,000 transit buses currently in operation in North America, converting the majority to more sustainable propulsion systems would have significant environmental implications for future generations.

“From our little corner of Winnipeg, we can make a fairly large impact on North American air quality,” says Cantin, whose team has collaborated on electric bus and charging systems with RRC’s Electric Vehicle and Technology Education Centre since 2011. More recently, his department began a new project with the College’s Transportation and Heavy Apprenticeship Trades program.

In April, Cantin was named to CBC Manitoba’s 2016 Future 40 list of “leaders and change-makers,” an honour that drew welcome attention to the home-grown expertise and ingenuity that’s driving the projects.

“Having these incubators of innovation being highlighted and shown to the general public is really valuable because it helps to inspire and show some of our youth … you don’t have to leave Winnipeg to make an impact,” he says.

“It’s really cool that we are able to acquire the knowledge [through] a post-secondary education here in Winnipeg — and to gain the experience, and be able to have a real tangible impact in North America.” Read More →

We’ve heard you loud and clear: you miss connecting with one another and with your alma mater. Guess what? We’ve missed you too!

To help us get reacquainted with one another and to showcase some of the innovative projects we’ve been working on, RRC will hold several after-work alumni receptions this fall. Hosted by participating schools, these events range from an evening of wine and cheese in a transformed downtown atrium to a retro video game lounge at our Notre Dame Campus.

Keep an eye out for an invitation to your special event that includes all of the fun details. If you want a jump on registration, please email Alumni Engagement and we’ll make sure you’re on the invite list. We look forward to seeing you in the weeks to come!

• Wednesday, October 12: Technology Alumni event
• Tuesday, October 26: Health Sciences and Community Services Alumni event
• Thursday, November 3: Business and Applied Arts Alumni event
• Wednesday, November 9: Trades Alumni event
• Thursday, November 17: Indigenous Alumni event

Don Fletcher will be the first to tell you he’s a workaholic. What else would you call someone who’s juggled several jobs at once for the past 45 years?

Thankfully, hard work pays off. And the Red River College grad is finally reaping the benefits – in a big way.

A builder and creator all his life, Fletcher’s latest invention, Nice Trim Fit, is taking the bathroom renovation world by storm – and sealing his fate as Winnipeg’s next big success story.

“I basically had to sell everything I had to get this all going, but it’s finally paid off,” says Fletcher, a self-described inventor who graduated from RRC’s Machine Shop Apprentice program in 1982.

Nice Trim Fit is a sealing system that’s easily installed on tubs, showers, backsplashes, baseboards and even toilets to protect them from mold, mildew and leaks.

Fletcher has obtained patents for the product in Canada and the U.S. (Australia is pending), and shares are sold out at $10,000 apiece. Nice Trim Fit is currently available at over 80 Home Hardware stores, and will soon be sold at Lowe’s, Ace Hardware and Rona.

RV companies and Manitoba Housing have also shown interest, and Fletcher has recently done demos for the Hilton, Canad Inns and Best Western hotel chains. He’s constantly taking the product on the road to trade shows, with another tour planned for this fall.

“It’s going haywire,” says Fletcher, who employs a staff of five. “The president of 3M came in to see my product,” he says of the multi-billion-dollar adhesives company. “He liked it so much, he said, ‘You’ve got a winner here. I’m going to endorse it.’ Now we’ve got their logo on our package.” Read More →

You asked, and we listened! Starting in the fall of 2016, Alumni Engagement at Red River College will be offering free life-long learning classes for our graduates. These events will be interest-based and offered throughout the year on a variety of topics. Wait…did we mention these events are FREE for RRC alumni?

First up this year is Rockin’ the Rainbow: Everything you ever wanted to know about LGBTT* but didn’t know who to ask. Do you know the recent movement regarding safe space programs or the roots of pride parades? Our world and the words we use shift and change all the time. Uncut and unfiltered, this two-hour event is your chance to delve into gender and sexual diversity and the complexity of the human state. Read More →

Jeremy Senaris took his main courses seriously as a Civil Engineering Technology student at Red River College. This summer, the 2010 grad aced appetizers and desserts too, as the runner-up on the third season of CTV series MasterChef Canada.

“I’m still pretty proud,” the 35-year-old self-taught chef says.

“I’ve always been a fan of the show. I’ve always watched the American one and then once the Canadian one started I tried out for the first season. I didn’t make it that season and at that point I was like, ‘OK I tried, I’ll never do it again.’”

Never say never. The show’s producers invited Senaris back to audition for the third season, and he wowed the judges through all 15 episodes up to the finale in June.

As a building plan examiner for the City of Winnipeg by day, Senaris works strictly by the book, making sure residential floor plans comply with building codes and checking the structural design of every house to ensure it’s safe and sound. After hours, he likes to colour outside the lines, concocting creative menus that might include anything from bison tataki to squid ink risotto and “ice cream” made with purple heirloom rice, whipped cream and candied bacon.

The key ingredient to success on both fronts is preparation.

“I’ve always been interested in structural design, which is why I took civil engineering,” he says, adding he chose RRC because he wanted to begin working in his field as soon as possible.

The three-year course met his need for speed, and the combination of classroom theory and hands-on co-op work experiences equipped him to hit the ground running after graduation. Read More →

Every business has to start somewhere. For Eric Olek’s hip hop-inspired clothing label, Friday Knights, that start came while the Red River College grad was selling T-shirts out of the trunk of his car.

“It was really messy,” says Olek of his company’s hard-knock beginnings in the spring of 2011. “I didn’t have any organization or accounting skills or anything like that. I look back on my social media feeds and I cringe at some of my marketing efforts. I was a rookie.”

Thankfully, there’s an RRC program for that. In September of the same year, Olek closed his trunk and opened the doors to the College’s Business Administration program so he could put his company on the right path. As challenging as the two-year experience was, it would be prove to be less rocky than the routes he’d taken in his younger years.

“I was kind of troubled in my early 20s, and I just had a big wake-up call and I wanted to do something positive with my life,” says Olek, now 26. “I really knew I needed to turn it around so I put my head down and focused on my education, and trying to start the business.”

Hip-hop music and style had always been a big part of Olek’s life, but designers just weren’t making clothes that he liked. He figured he wasn’t alone, so why not just make them himself?

Creating the clothing came naturally, as did the name for the company – which he thought of while mopping floors at a local convenience store on Friday nights, wishing he were out pursuing his passion instead. But clearly there was much more to running a business than that.

Going into Business Administration, Olek already knew what he wanted to do; he just needed the tools to do it properly.

“When you go to college, you’re doing things because you want to do them – you’re not doing them because the next guy in high school is doing them or because you’re worried about what your peers are going to think,” says Olek, who juggled both Friday Knights and his full-time convenience store job while going to RRC. “You really fall into your own and you learn about the type of person that you are.” Read More →

Are you an expert on management and business processes — or specialized trades such as hospitality, health sciences and construction — willing to mentor and instruct others on how to best improve their own practices?

RRC’s Corporate Solutions department is seeking instructors and subject-matter experts for a variety of fields. For more information, please visit our RED blog.

In television, every good story opens with a strong visual.

Toronto-based Global News anchor Crystal Goomansingh’s mom likes to show off a snapshot taken more than 30 years ago during a Santa Claus parade in downtown Winnipeg. At age five, Crystal is posed in front of the old CJOB broadcast centre at Portage Avenue and Lenore Street where, years later, she’d get her first big break in broadcasting.

“My mom said I did not want my picture with the Santa float at all — I wanted my picture with the radio station as the background,” Goomansingh says.

“I don’t know if that was an early sign or what it was; there was something about it that I really loved.”

Fast-forward to 1997, when Goomansingh was getting her feet wet in radio and TV broadcasting while earning dual academic and vocational diplomas at Tec-Voc High School.

“We would do news programs and you’d get to do all the different jobs, and it was just something that clicked and I loved it,” she says.

That fall, at age 18, Goomansingh would be one of the youngest students entering the Creative Communications program at Red River College, but as high school graduation loomed, her future was still uncertain.

That’s when CJOB entered the picture again, with a full-ride scholarship that would not only see her through two years of intense schooling, but would also provide on-the-job experience.

“I still remember the day that I got the letter from CJOB saying I got the scholarship,” she says. “One of my best friends drove me down to CJOB and … I think I held it together in the office, but I got to the car and I was just crying and shaking reading that letter.” Read More →

As a kid, Justin Currie used to spend hours drawing dragons, robots and monsters. As an adult, not much has changed – other than now he gets paid for it.

“It’s a much better deal,” says the Red River College alum.

Since graduating from RRC’s Graphic Design – Advanced program in 2007, Currie has managed to transform his childhood passion into a bankable career as an illustrator for his own design studio, Chasing Artwork. The Exchange District company publishes Currie’s own graphic novels – his first one, 2014’s Cassie and Tonk, won the Manuel Dias Manitoba Book Design and Illustration award for 2015 – and originated a unique art technique he calls “shattered vector painting.”

When Currie’s not on the 9-to-5 grind, working on pages and artwork for clients – one of his recent contracts was with Blizzard Entertainment for the popular new Overwatch video game – you can find him possibly anywhere in the world, rubbing elbows with celebrities at comic conventions.

“It’s a lot of fun,” says Currie, fresh from a trip to Megacon in Orlando, Fla., where he moved a pile of copies of Cassie and Tonk.

“I think academically I never really excelled very much, but drawing wise I always seemed to be at the better end of the spectrum, so I just kept that up. Upon graduating from high school, it didn’t look like artwork was going to be much of a career option and then I found out about Graphic Design because a cousin of mine was in the program, and it just really clicked with me — ‘OK, this is what I want to do.’ ” Read More →