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 →

A longtime community leader will be recognized with the College’s highest academic honour for the lasting impact she’s had on the lives of children and families.

Eleanor Thompson, Director of Development at Urban Circle Training Centre, received RRC’s 2016 Honorary Diploma in Community Development/Community Economic Development.

As co-founder of Urban Circle, Eleanor has worked tirelessly for nearly 30 years to provide accessible, culturally appropriate education and training to Indigenous people in Winnipeg.

She’s a strong advocate for programs that are grounded in Indigenous culture, and that lead to employment in stable sectors with potential for growth. As such, Urban Circle partners with RRC on certificate programs in heath care, family support and early childhood education — many of which lead to advanced studies in social work and education.

In recent years, Eleanor served as one of the driving forces behind the development of the Makoonsag Intergenerational Centre on Selkirk Avenue, a 52-space early learning facility for the children of Urban Circle students. She’s also a member of the Premier’s Advisory Council on Education, Poverty and Citizenship.

“She has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to providing culturally relevant and respectful educational opportunities to empower the social and economic development of her community,” says RRC’s Dr. Christine Watson, Vice-President, Academic and Research.

“Her belief in the transformative power of education truly reflects the mandate and values of Red River College.”

You don’t always get a replay in life, but sometimes luck tilts in your favour.

Pinball wizard, carpenter and family guy Eric Swanson pursued two careers as a graduate of Red River College programs, and he enjoyed the college experience so much he embarked on a third career in 2014, returning to RRC as an instructor for the Carpenter Apprenticeship program.

Swanson, 36, graduated from the Hotel and Restaurant Management program in 1999, but when he and his wife Angela decided to start a family, he knew a career reset was in order. The hospitality industry’s late hours weren’t conducive to fatherhood, so he joined his dad Robert Swanson’s building company and headed back to RRC to earn his Red Seal certification as a carpenter.

“The instructors that I had when I came through my apprenticeship were the real inspiration for me wanting to do this as a career,” he says.

“I knew from Day 1 of my very first level that this was something I wanted to do. These guys are just so inspiring here, and they just make your day fun. When you come in, you’re learning but you want to be there. I rarely hear somebody say, ‘Let’s get the heck out of here.’ Everybody wants to be here.”

Read More →

For the first time in the department’s history, Alumni Engagement is embarking on a large-scale research project to better understand our alumni and what you need and want from the College. This will be a two-phase project with qualitative research (focus groups) beginning in June and quantitative research (online survey) beginning this fall.

You, our alumni, are incredibly important to RRC and are in an ideal position to give us valuable, first-hand information from your unique perspective. Invitations to participate in both phases of the project will be randomly generated (meaning you may or may not receive an invitation); if you are selected to participate and are contacted by our project partner Prairie Research Inc., we sincerely hope you take the opportunity to give us your honest feedback as it will be used to help influence future alumni relations programming.

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing your feedback in early 2017!

For additional information, please contact the Alumni Engagement department at 204.632.2359 or alumni@rrc.ca.

Some people choose a career based on passion, while others are driven by necessity.

For Rebecca Trudeau, it was both.

Trudeau always knew she wanted to help break poverty’s vicious cycle, but it wasn’t until she discovered Red River College’s Community Development/Community Economic Development program that she realized she would be able to pursue her dream job — and, just as importantly, hold down a steady 9-to-5.

“When I was 17, we got evicted,” says Trudeau. “And that’s when my mind changed as to what I wanted to do with my life.”

The West End resident grew up on social assistance. Her mom, Kerry, is schizoaffective, meaning she exhibits traits of both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It made working to support Trudeau and her two sisters impossible for the single mom.

While Trudeau knew she wanted to make a difference in the lives of others as well as her own, she went ahead with her plan to study history and conflict resolution at university for two years. But with student debt racking up, her fear of not being able to land a steady job straight out of school had her mapping out a different path.

“I chose the Community Development program so I was not only able to help the people that helped me when I was little, but also to learn about my own family and how to get my mom to be a more productive member of society,” she says. Read More →

When Augustina Foley’s young charges at the Morrow Avenue Child Care Program (MACCP) at Hastings School go home each day, they take a little piece of Foley along with them.

“Parents will tell me, ‘We take you home, because these kids don’t want you to know that they’re being disobedient at home; they have that much regard for you,’ ” Foley says.

The 2007 graduate of Red River College’s Early Childhood Education program is proud of the relationships she’s built with parents and the kids in her care. As MACCP site manager, she’s on hand at 7 a.m. each morning to greet parents so they can share information about daily activities and any issues that arise in the child’s life, both at the centre and at home.

Sometimes, if kids are acting up or acting out at home, Foley will sit down with them to see if she can get to the heart of the matter, and then invite parents to join the discussion when the child is ready to talk about any underlying causes.

“Which has helped most of the parents, too,” she says. “I do appreciate when parents trust us that much to be involved in that manner with their kids.”  Read More →

Congratulations to Jill Sexsmith (Creative Communications ’06) on the launch of her debut collection titled Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You.

Book launch details:
Monday, May 2, 2016 | 7:30 pm
McNally Robinson Booksellers | Travel Alcove
Grant Park Mall | 1120 Grant Ave | Wpg, MB

The book explores the peculiar places we look for validation, for purpose, for a life we might recognize as wholly our own. Off-kilter heroes and heroines find themselves camping in elm trees set to be felled; seeking refuge in a spare bedroom carved out of an opal mine; singing to a stranger on the other side of a bathroom wall.

As her characters struggle with relationships, Sexsmith deftly cuts through raw and intimate moments to show how strangely impervious to their desperate circumstances people can be.

Have a milestone, achievement, or update to celebrate? Contact RRC Alumni Engagement and share your “Class Note” in 150 words or less.