When I was in high school, the guidance counsellor encouraged me to “choose a career,” as if it were a one-off decision. It turns out that the contemporary labour market is much more complex and interesting than that. The alumni profiles I’ve been writing for one of my alma matres, Montreal’s Concordia University, illustrate the wealth of possible paths one can follow — or forge.
Here is a small sample of them.
Concordia grad helps life-saving medical innovations reach Latin America
There was a time when Michael Padvaiskas Ackerman, BComm 86, EMBA 96, would not have endorsed a university degree wholeheartedly. Back in 1996, when he graduated from Concordia’s Faculty of Commerce, now the John Molson School of Business, he wasn’t sure how to apply what he had learned.
“I was like a lot of business students: I’d expected to get some sort of magic wand I could wave to make great strategy come out,” Padvaiskas Ackerman says. “But in reality, business is an art. You can’t just open a textbook and find all the answers.
“What I didn’t realize until later is that my education equipped me with a basic understanding, ways of thinking and tackling problems — the building blocks I needed to evolve my skills over time.”
Fast forward 25 years. Padvaiskas Ackerman is president of Ackerman Pharma, a multi-million-dollar corporate group he founded in 2000. It helps manufacturers bring pharmaceuticals and medical devices to the Latin American market.
Many hurdles must be cleared before new products can reach the patients who need them, from regulatory approval and warehousing to packaging in Spanish and distribution.
Continue reading on Concordia’s website
Antonietta Grassi awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
The Concordia alumna is the only Canadian among the 2024 fine-arts recipients
At first glance, the brightly coloured geometric paintings of Antonietta Grassi, BFA 94, appear purely abstract. But a closer look reveals that they often evoke textiles, machines, architecture or coded information.
The recurring fine lines that resemble woven fabric are no coincidence: Grassi’s mother was a garment worker and Grassi started out in the clothing industry as well. She was working as a colour researcher, textile designer and fashion designer when she decided to enroll in art-history night classes at Concordia.
“I’ve always loved the arts, but back then, I didn’t know that becoming an artist was an actual career path,” she recalls. “I was just taking those courses for myself.”
Grassi enjoyed her studies so much that she negotiated with her employer to get a day off each week in exchange for less pay. This allowed her to start taking studio art classes, before committing to a new path, becoming a full-time student in Concordia’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program.
The Joy of Brewing
How a commerce grad built a business to share his love of craft beer
Back during his days studying at Concordia, Keegan Kelertas, BComm 11, was a regular at Reggie’s, the student bar on Sir George Williams Campus. He didn’t know it then, but a little over a decade later, he’d make a deal to put his own craft beer, 4 Origines, on the menu. It recently became one of more than 550 sites across Quebec where the beer is available.
“Getting into craft beer was basically an accident,” says Kelertas, who co-founded Montreal-based microbrewery. It started when he met Michael D’Ornellas, an enthusiastic brewing hobbyist, at a party in 2015. “He brought a case of beer he’d made at home,” Kelertas recalls. “It contained tea, which was a new idea to me at the time. I was like, ‘Wow, this tastes fantastic! We have to do something together.’”
The weekend after the party, Kelertas and D’Ornellas began planning a business. Since they both had full-time day jobs, their preparations continued for two years’ worth of weekends. “That was much to the chagrin of my now-wife,” laughs Kelertas.
Onerahtókha Karlie Marquis named executive director of Mohawk Council of Kahnawake
Finance grad uses Concordia knowledge to serve her community
Onerahtókha Karlie Marquis, BComm 16, has always felt connected to Kahnawake, her home south of Montreal.
Although she enrolled in the Department of Finance with the goal of serving the ancestral Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory and its 8,000 residents, Marquis was amazed when she was recently appointed executive director of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK).
“It’s exciting but also very humbling,” says the 32-year-old John Molson School of Business graduate.
In her new role, Marquis will assume responsibility for the administration and day-to-day operations of the council’s programs and employees.
Marquis first started working for the MCK as a student. Over the next few years, she progressed from financial clerk to financial analyst, financial manager and, eventually, business development manager. In the process, she built relationships with people from the council’s 15 departments, including Environmental Protection, Justice Services and Recreation.
“Everything has a budget and financial implications,” Marquis says. “The finance world really opened up every aspect of the organization for me.”
Marquis is hoping that her new mandate will give her the chance to address certain issues. For instance, in her early 20s, she analyzed the community’s educational statistics for a class project and saw that the graduation rate was going down.
“I also noticed that [youth] sports didn’t have as many fans in the arena and it was harder to find coaches to volunteer,” she says. “Those sorts of things bothered me. When this job popped up, I realized I had the opportunity to bring those issues out and try to turn them around.”
There are several reasons why Marquis feels ready to take on her new responsibilities. First, she points to her upbringing. Between learning from her family and attending elementary school on the territory, she absorbed the values of her culture.
“We are Onkwehón:we [Indigenous] people who are here to take care of each other. Our Mohawk values are a really good foundation for making sound, smart, collective decisions.”
Her studies at John Molson equipped her further, she says.
“Although the MCK is a not-for-profit organization, all the classes I attended were applicable to its mission. You have to know about communications and how to solicit buy-in from your community. You need to learn about organizational behaviour and personal relationships. And, obviously, finance and accounting.”
Marquis acknowledges that due to the history of settler colonialism in Canada, many Indigenous people have negative associations with educational institutions. For her own part, she feels largely positive about her Concordia experience, although she was surprised that many students and even some professors didn’t know about the existence of Kahnawake.
“It’s 15 minutes away!” she laughs.
Photo on main page by VICTOR CHARLIE on Unsplash.
