When locally renowned chef Adam Donnelly was a kid, he couldn’t have cared less about cooking, menu planning, or even the means by which food ended up on his family’s dinner table.

But after two years of training at Red River College’s Culinary Arts program, Donnelly — now the head chef and co-owner of Segovia Tapas Bar & Restaurant — found he’d discovered his true calling, an epiphany that would kick-start his career as one of the most buzzed-about young chefs in the city.

“When I was younger, I’d just come home and food would be on the table,” says Donnelly, a 28-year-old Pinawa native. “I never helped my mom make food because I was never really that interested in it. Then I got older and moved away, and I had to learn to do it all myself.”

Donnelly’s original post-secondary plan was to pursue film studies in university, but he began bingeing on cookbooks and cooking instruction manuals during a break between semesters. He decided instead to take a year off so he could save up for RRC’s Culinary Arts program; shortly after classes commenced, he knew he was hooked.

“It really kept me interested — there was so much I didn’t know, so every day I came to school, I would learn something new and different,” he says.

“(The program) really gives you the basic starting skills that you need to succeed in a professional kitchen. And then you take it from there — whether you want to cook in a hotel, or cooking Italian food or French food or whatever — you can take those basic skills and go in any direction you want.”

In Donnelly’s case, those skills took him all over the world. After first honing his skills at some of Winnipeg’s finest eateries (Amici and Sydney’s), he landed a series of cooking gigs in Melbourne, Australia. He returned to Winnipeg briefly, then hopped the pond to England, where he worked under Michelin-starred Chef Tom Aikens. Read More →

Having grown up in northern Manitoba, Winnie Giesbrecht knows first-hand just how hard it can be for people living in remote communities to access quality health care.

A 1972 graduate of Red River College’s Licensed Practical Nursing program, Giesbrecht has made it her life’s mission to serve those in need of medical care — overcoming many professional and personal challenges along the way.

Originally from Grand Rapids, Giesbrecht moved to southern Manitoba as a teenager to go to high school, but moved back to her hometown soon after when she got married and settled down to raise a family.

Tragically, Giesbrecht’s husband died, leaving her as the sole provider for her three young children. She relocated to Selkirk to be closer to family, and eventually completed high school while working to support her family. Upon earning her high school diploma, she enrolled in the LPN program at RRC.

“While I was taking my GED in Selkirk, we went on a tour of Red River College and at the time, they had just started the LPN program, and it drew an interest for me. I had always had a desire to work with people and in the medical field before,” said Giesbrecht. “I knew I had to do something to create a better life for my sons and provide for them the best I could, and the only way to do that was to get an education.”

Giesbrecht went to school during the day and worked at a local restaurant in the evenings and weekends to support her family, and graduated from the LPN program in 1972. She was quickly hired on at Selkirk General Hospital, but continued her studies while working at the hospital to earn a Registered Nursing Diploma, and her hard work and sacrifice hasn’t gone unnoticed by her children

“It wasn’t easy for mom to work to pay the bills, study, and look after us,” said Giesbrecht’s son, Reg Fredborg. “But she persevered and made it.” Read More →

There are all manner of misconceptions surrounding the field of technical communication — chief among them, the one painting practitioners as fussy grammar nerds toiling away on text-heavy instruction manuals and other technical documents.

But even more annoying to Red River College grad Rachel Ines (Technical Communication, 2006) is the stereotype that equates the field’s “plain language” approach with a reduction in intellectual content.

“Writing in plain language doesn’t mean dumbing it down,” says Ines, currently the Communications Coordinator for the University of Manitoba’s Centre on Aging. “It simply means understanding how to adapt your writing for your audience. If you’re writing for an academic audience, you’re using terminology they’ll understand. And if you’re writing for the general public, it’s the same thing. But it’s definitely not dumbing things down.”

A longtime Winnipeg resident, Ines graduated high school with dual passions, having excelled in both English and history classes. After spending a year in B.C., she returned home to earn a degree in Anthropology from the University of Winnipeg — which in turn led to positions with Parks Canada and several local museums, as well as a six-month internship in New Zealand.

But Ines wasn’t completely sold on the idea of pursuing additional degrees in Anthropology, so instead turned her attention to a career in writing. At first, she considered training to become a journalist, but later focused on technical communication — a field that allowed her to further explore her love of writing, and to debunk yet another of those pesky misconceptions.

“A lot of people think technical communication is boring — that you just write instruction manuals all day,” she laughs.

Read More →

She is bubbly, personable, and passionate about building relationships with youth – these are the traits that Leilani Esteban, a Child and Youth Care grad from 2007, embodies as the Program Coordinator for Together in Elmwood/Parent Child Coalition, as well as the Community Coordinator for Elmwood Communities That Care.

And as a mother of five, Esteban is no stranger to dealing with children.

“When I entered the Child and Youth Care profession I was a single mother of four,” she says, “but I was an older adult returning to school as a single mother. And I was looking for a field where I could give back to the community.”

Before entering the Child and Youth Care program at Red River College, Esteban had another job – as a hairstylist. However, she soon realized that her true calling was working with youth.

“I found that I was good at building relationships with youth, so I wanted to take that and I wanted to build on that. I looked into the list of courses for RRC and I thought that Child and Youth Care was best suited to my skills and I guess what my qualities were, so I thought that was a perfect fit.”

For Esteban, her career choice and her family life have a symbiotic relationship.

“My children were growing up and I wanted to know more about how to keep them on the right path. My main goal was to kind of get all the resources I could to be the best possible parent I could and use those skills to build a career.” Read More →

Ellen Barron, a graduate of Red River College’s Aircraft Maintenance Engineer Diploma program, has a career that’s really going places.

Since graduating from RRC in 2005, Barron, an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, has worked in Edmonton, Ottawa, and Sweden in various aircraft engine repair, maintenance, and audit facilities.

Barron grew up on a farm in rural Manitoba, always surrounded by machinery. “I would help rip apart tractor engines,” Barron said with an enthusiasm only a mechanical buff would understand.

After taking a year off from high school, Barron decided to stake out a career for herself. “I had so many interests and they were really broad,” she explained. “So I thought, ‘I like to travel, and I like mechanics, and I like to fly but I don’t want to be a pilot.’” It was Barron’s grandmother who finally suggested she work as an aircraft mechanic. “I thought, ‘I guess someone needs to fix those,’” she added.

Barron would find RRC’s diploma program in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering a perfect fit. “They gave us the theory we needed. We had a bit of practical,” Barron explained. “That’s why I liked the RRC course, because I got to take some of my theory, go out and actually use it.”

Barron entered the program in 2001. “I came into the industry at a really weird time,” she pointed out. “The industry was really bad back in 2001 after the towers fell. Of course, the economy is dictated by how many people fly. So that was a concern for aircraft engineers, like myself.” But Barron didn’t let the tragedy of 9/11 stop her from thriving. Read More →

Jessica Saunders says the key to her job is being a good listener, non-judgmental and non-biased.

Saunders is a child and youth care practitioner for Macdonald Youth Services in Winnipeg, a United Way member organization that “fosters hope and opportunities to empower children, youth and families throughout Manitoba.” MYS has over 700 employees and served over 6,200 youth in 2008-2009. Saunders is based at one of its many group homes and works with six boys aged 13-18.

“I thought it was going to be scary but it’s not,” she says. “It surprised me that the kids can still be happy after all of the things that happened to them. They can still laugh and have fun.”

Saunders graduated from high school in 2007. She went to university for one year and then took a year off to decide what she wanted to do. Saunders knew an instructor at Red River College who told her about its Child and Youth Care program.

“I looked up the course, read about it and knew I wanted to do it.”

Saunders enrolled in the program in 2009. At the time she knew she wanted to help kids but had no idea what type of job she wanted.

“If I hadn’t gone to Red River College, I probably wouldn’t have known about working at a group home,” she explains. Read More →

From the time he was a young boy, Dan Dupuis has dreamed of working with airplanes. However while growing up, the high cost of earning a pilot’s license was prohibitive for his family.

After graduating high school and beginning to work, it didn’t look like Dupuis’s dream would be possible.

“I got married pretty young,” he says, which made it difficult to stop working and begin studying for a career change.

It wasn’t until someone connected with Red River College asked Dupuis about what he would consider his dream job to be, that things started to come together.

Dupuis didn’t hesitate. “I answered that my dream job would to be to work with aircraft.”

Shortly thereafter, in 2007, Dupuis began his studies at Red River College. He enrolled in the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer Diploma program.

Back in elementary and high school, Dupuis was not a strong student, and found studying frustrating. “I didn’t read very well,” he says.  “I didn’t like the kind of school work we did.”

However, for Dupuis, studying something that he was passionate about made all the difference. Read More →

Red River College continues to take a lead role in providing management and leadership education to the health sector in Manitoba, through the delivery of its Health Service Management (HSM) program.

In October 2011, a class of 32 students — all of them employees of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority — successfully completed the program, making for a total of more than 200 HSM graduates over the last 10 years.

The program’s success rate demonstrates the College’s continued commitment to leadership in the health service field, and to providing health sector employees with the knowledge and theory to become effective, proactive managers.

“They are acquiring relevant and applied skills and knowledge relating to management and leadership in health services,” says Jo-Anne Shay, Program Director of RRC’s School of Continuing and Distance Education. “It’s a very applied focus, so these are skills that have been identified by the Canadian College of Health Leaders. That is the foundation of this program.”

The HSM program is open to anyone, but is tailor-made for those already employed in management positions or those aspiring to career advancement within the health sector. The WRHA has built its capacity over the years by sponsoring many of its own employees’ as students, and much of the program’s success can be attributed to the participation of key health care professionals who serve as guest lecturers on a regular basis. Read More →

In the world of marketing and branding, it helps to have a strong connection to your subject matter, since much of your job revolves around helping people create emotional ties of their own.

That’s certainly the case with Red River College alum Kyle Romaniuk, who as president of creative agency Cocoon Branding oversaw the recent rebrand of long-running children’s charity The Rainbow Society, now known as The Dream Factory.

Romaniuk, who graduated from RRC’s Graphic Design program in 1996, has been serving on the charity’s board since 2009. But his connection runs much deeper than that.

After being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 12, Romaniuk was on the receiving end of his own dream come true — a chance to swim with dolphins, made possible by The Rainbow Society. He sees his current work with the newly-revamped organization as a way to give back to a particularly worthy cause.

“My whole family was encouraged to participate in my ‘dream’ … so for my parents and my sister, I know it’s one of the highlights of their lives, as well as mine,” says Romaniuk, whose dream took him to the Dolphin Resource Center in the Florida Keys (the same place where TV’s Flipper was trained).

“It was during one of the most difficult times of our lives — while we were all trying to deal with the cancer of a child, which is hard enough on a kid, never mind how hard it would be on a parent. So it was an opportunity we all got to experience together, get our minds off the illness and treatments, and just escape in the dream.” Read More →

Impressions of Grant Maluga can be deceiving, particularly if your first meeting takes place on a football field. Six feet tall and broadly built, Maluga might come off as an intimidating presence. But nothing could be further from the truth.

“People might look at me and think I’m immature or tough or troubled,” he says. “But on in the inside, I’m soft as a teddy bear.”

Maluga moved to Winnipeg this past autumn to join the Winnipeg Rifles as a defensive lineman while taking Biindigen College Studies at Red River College. Biindigen (Ojibwe for “welcome”) combines introductory college programs with Aboriginal culture, language and history courses. Maluga says he feels at home.

“Everyone in Biindigen is friendly… you get a lot of one-on-one attention there,” he says. “A teacher the other day told me, ‘You’re more of a friend than a student.’”

Some people might be surprised at the momentum in Maluga’s life, considering the hurdles he’s had to overcome. When he was eight, his mother left the family home in Brandon; he hasn’t seen her since. He’s also had to cope with his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

“Once I was in Grade 6, I realized I had ADHD. The stories I was told about when I was younger, you can hear the ADHD in them.”

Maluga took medication, but the pills either failed to curb his behavioural problems or turned him into – in his words – “a zombie.” Arguments with his father were frequent.

“I could tell I was going downhill,” he says.

In high school, however, another option presented itself. A teacher at his school suggested football. Read More →