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 →

Each year, Red River College awards a Red River College Honorary Diploma to an individual who demonstrates high standards of excellence in their personal and professional achievements, and whose involvement in the community is widely recognized.

David Angus is committed to the Chamber movement. He volunteered as board chair and in 1999 was hired as President and CEO of The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce.

He currently serves on the Manitoba Museum Board of Governors; Winnipeg Poverty Reduction Council; and JPAC (Joint Public Advisory Committee) for the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a national committee of three countries working to protect the environment.

Under his leadership, the Winnipeg Chamber has increased its membership to the highest level in its history and has been recognized by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce as an Accredited Chamber with Distinction. The Chamber has also received recognition by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives for being in the top 10 Chambers for membership growth.

The Chamber has been instrumental in bringing a World Trade Centre to Winnipeg; establishing Leadership Winnipeg, Yes! Winnipeg and the BOLD initiative: a grassroots public policy campaign designed to mobilize the community behind forward-thinking BOLD ideas to increase prosperity in Winnipeg.

Each year, Red River College awards a Red River College Honorary Diploma to an individual who demonstrates high standards of excellence in their personal and professional achievements, and whose involvement in the community is widely recognized.

Ace Burpee has worked in radio for over a decade in almost every capacity and is currently host of the ever popular Ace Burpee Show on 103.1 Virgin Radio.

In addition to hosting his own show, Ace hosts a nationally aired Top 20 countdown program, writes a column in Metro Winnipeg and hosts Manitoba’s top rated cooking show – Great Tastes of Manitoba.

Ace, who very proudly hails from Cooks Creek Manitoba, is also well known for the hundreds of charitable events and causes that he donates his time to every year. He is an in-demand event host, public speaker and event organizer. His initiatives have helped to raise millions of dollars for local and international charities over the last several years.

His reputation in this town is of a man who never sleeps because he’s too busy helping others. It would be difficult to name a cause in Winnipeg that has not in some way, been touched by his efforts.

For his commitment to community and making Manitoba a better place, Ace has received many acknowledgments.

Ace is a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his service to our community, he is the recipient of a Hero of Mental Health Award from the Canadian Mental Health Association, he has received a Volunteer Manitoba Award for Outstanding Community Leadership and last year, was recognized as a Manitoba Hero.

A lifetime playing drums couldn’t help Brock Macpherson find his rhythm in his first year at Red River College. Enrolled in the Business Administration program straight out of high school, he says his priority was decidedly freshman: hanging out with friends at downtown watering hole the King’s Head Pub, not studying.

But just five short years later, he’s senior account manager and part owner of a Winnipeg-based Xerox sales agency, Commtech Office Solutions. He joined their team after College in 2012; now, the 24-year-old helps to oversee some 900 small- and medium-sized business clients in the city.

Good thing he took a year off from college and “got the 19-year-old out of [his] system” before returning to school a year older and wiser. He found his footing in a year-long group project for an entrepreneurship course. Each group of 16 students needed a leader and no one was taking the initiative. Macpherson “stepped out of his comfort zone” and volunteered.

“That moment at Red River, that basically set the tone for the rest of my years,” he says.

Evening sessions of pizza and exam prep now took priority over extracurricular pints. Macpherson discovered how motivating it was to teach class materials to classmates, and how effective it was for his own learning — they trusted him to know his stuff, so he didn’t want to let them down.

It’s no different today in his role at Commtech. Macpherson is quick to explain that Xerox isn’t simply a company that sells printers to offices — their competitive advantage is a suite of “software solutions” that help companies digitize documents, manage data and increase security. Read More →

He can still remember splicing together radio broadcast assignments using cassette tapes and an X-acto knife.

But you won’t find Paul Samyn pining for the dated technology of his Red River College days. Since becoming editor of the Winnipeg Free Press in 2012, he’s been pushing his newsroom towards info-sharing platforms — Twitter, Facebook, email-driven alerts — that best deliver news to readers. Young hires, even interns, are encouraged by the 27-year vet to tap into their rich understanding of multimedia.

“Some of the new hires that we have, we’re looking to them to show us stuff and help us,” says Samyn. “And I think that’s really exciting.”

The Winnipeg Free Press has evolved from a newspaper into a non-stop “news engine,” Samyn says, noting this “anytime, anywhere” news model will determine its long-term success.

What haven’t changed, however, are the basics of good journalism underpinning the Free Press’s reputation as a trusted information source.

“You need to write. You need to think. You need to be able to communicate,” says Samyn, who graduated from RRC’s Creative Communications program in 1988 and moved immediately into the Winnipeg Free Press newsroom as a summer intern. Read More →

What makes great leadership? According to 2013 Disability and Community Support grad Audrey Dennis, it’s not just about your ideas — it’s also about the ideas of those around you.

“As a good leader, you need to recognize that your staff are the people you need to be consulting when you’re making decisions, because they’re the ones who work closest with the residents,” says Dennis, 44. “You have to value your staff, and put aside your own feelings.”

That philosophy is helping Dennis — who holds the apt title of team leader — introduce new initiatives for her residents and staff at St.Amant, a comprehensive resource and home for Manitobans with developmental disabilities.

Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Dennis moved to Toronto when she was four, and later came to Winnipeg with her husband in 1999. Never afraid to try something new, she spent much of her early life pursuing a wide range of education and careers — from law enforcement to esthetics and electrolysis — before finding her calling as a support worker at St.Amant in 2005.

“The opportunity to quantify your work is greater in the [human service] field,” she says. “I feel I can connect with people in my care. I not only share the not-so-nice times in their lives — I get to experience their life journeys, successes, milestones, and the joyous times with them.”

With her career choice clear, Dennis next wanted to focus her education. In 2008, she signed up for Red River College’s Disability and Community Support program — a task she handled while still working full time. In addition to formal developmental planning skills, the program taught Dennis crucial values for disability support — including the need for patience, and to set smaller goals for long-term success. Read More →

Before he was even old enough to drive, Dale Place was running a business doing auto repair out of his parents’ garage.

So it’s no surprise that just a few years later, the ambitious teen became the youngest Red Seal Machinist in Canada, when he graduated from Red River College’s Machinist Apprentice program in 2000 at age 19. He achieved this feat by completing his required apprenticeship hours while still in high school, working at a machine shop he’d started at when he was 12 years old, sweeping the floors after school and in the summer.

While he was still completing his program at RRC, Place decided to take a risk and started a machine shop in his hometown of Selkirk. Starting out as a tiny one-man shop with little initial capital and no financial help, he grew the business into the success it is today: Manitoba’s largest machine shop, with nearly 70 staff and a 30,000-square foot facility.

“I liked working for myself right from the get-go. I wasn’t really interested in working at a burger joint,” says Place, the President and CEO of Kinetic Machine Works, noting he declined a full university scholarship to take Engineering in favour of continuing with the machinist trade.

“I’m a big advocate of the trades. Everyone I know who has gone into a trade, from RRC or another technical school, ends up making the same amount of money or more than those who went to university. There are a lot of situations where working in a trade and actually getting to build something can be more rewarding, but a lot of students just don’t know about these options.” Read More →

Marcy Markusa has interviewed countless politicians and dignitaries — from Preston Manning to Brian Bowman — but ask her which interviews stand out the most, and she’s quick to recall conversations with regular members of the community.

“I think I remember [those] personal interviews more, because there is no reason that person has to talk to you,” says Markusa, the 41-year-old host of Information Radio on CBC Radio One Manitoba.

“[For example,] why does a 73-year-old woman have to tell the world that she can’t read? There’s nothing for her to gain by doing that — except she realizes that by sharing that story, she’ll inspire someone else who also happens to be illiterate and might want to learn to read.”

Community is a common thread throughout Markusa’s life, dating back to her days growing up in North Kildonan, when a natural curiosity for her home city and province led her to always be that “person in the crowd.”

“I just started to be that person who said, ‘Hey, what do you know about this area?’ ‘Hey, what do you know about that neighbourhood?’ ‘Did you know this is going on?’” Read More →

Over the past 14 years, Sheila Harris has worked on exciting projects that touch the lives of many Manitobans, including improving the province’s drivers licensing system, implementing a new patient care system at St-Boniface Hospital, and installing MTS’s new 4G cellular network.

It might sound like she’s had multiple career changes, but all of this has been part of Harris’s role as an Information Technology (IT) Business and Systems Analyst.

“One thing that attracted me to the IT field is you can do so many different things. I’ve worked in five or six different industries now, which is great because I like variety, I like challenges and I like to learn,” says Harris, a Senior IT Consultant with SmartPlanIT. “It’s not just one job description, which is interesting to me.”

Because local organizations planning large-scale, complex software implementations often don’t have the resources to do the work, SmartPlanIT provides the people – and the brain power – to get the job done.

Harris might be sent to work as a Systems Analyst, a Solutions Architect, or a Business Analyst, the title she holds in her current role: working on replacing a Laboratory Information Management System for the City of Winnipeg’s Water and Waste Department, which will result in improvements to how Winnipeg’s water is tested and safeguarded, she explains.

“I feel really lucky that I’ve been given opportunities to work on some very meaningful projects in Winnipeg and the province,” Harris says. “I am so fortunate to live here, and it’s really rewarding to know the work I do impacts the community I live and work in, in a positive way.” Read More →