More than a decade ago, CreativeMornings was launched out of a desire for ongoing, accessible events for creative communities to connect. Today, these communities gather in 223 cities across 67 countries — including right here in Winnipeg.

The Winnipeg chapter of CreativeMornings not only celebrates our city’s creative talent, but also promotes an open space to connect with like-minded individuals. From marketing legends to hometown heroes, speakers are selected by each chapter based on a global theme. This month’s theme is MONUMENTAL: what will you bear witness to? What will you leave behind when you’re gone? We each have stories and creativity to share – and what we do and how we do it not only impacts our lives but also the lives around us.

Sean Rayland, a graduate of RRC Polytech’s Indigenous Social Entrepreneurship program, is CreativeMornings Winnipeg’s speaker on Friday, February 25 from 8:15 – 9:30 a.m. CT. You won’t want to miss his talk: Making Monumental Change – one t-shirt at a time. He’ll be sharing about his experience as an ex-gang member and recovering addict who now runs a successful social enterprise as owner of Indigenous-led clothing company Red Rebel Armour.

Out with the old and in with the new – now is the perfect time to level up your office set-up and rep RRC Polytech at home and on the go!

As our world slowly begins to open up and we emerge from two years of adapting to pandemic work and home life, we’re looking forward to more “precedented times”. Whether you’re working from home or the office, staying put or itching to travel, you can rep new RRC Polytech swag as a proud alumni member.

*Contest Now Closed*

We’re giving away 10 prize packs filled with RRC Polytech-branded goodies so you can level up your office space.

From keeping your coffee the perfect temperature, to making sure your sound is crystal clear (meetings or music – we won’t judge), these prize packages are sure to make working and playing from home much sweeter.

Each prize pack is worth CAD$650 and includes branded RRC Polytech merchandise, including:

• An Ember self-heating mug
• Skullcandy Riff headphones
• Clothing and an insulated tumbler from RRC Polytech’s Campus Store
• A bamboo wireless charging pad
• A smart reusable notebook from Rocketbook
• A mobile phone tripod

More than a decade ago, CreativeMornings was launched out of a desire for ongoing, accessible events for creative communities to connect. Today, these communities gather in 223 cities across 67 countries — including right here in Winnipeg.

The Winnipeg chapter of CreativeMornings not only celebrates our city’s creative talent, but also promotes an open space to connect with like-minded individuals. From marketing legends to hometown heroes, speakers are selected by each chapter based on a global theme. This month’s theme is FREE: free to be your authentic self in life and at work; free to be with the content you share and the people you interact with; free to achieve your fullest creative potential.

Natalie Bell, RRC Polytech grad (aka @PegCityLovely – one of Winnipeg’s original influencers) is CreativeMornings Winnipeg’s speaker this Friday, January 28 from 8:15 – 9:45 a.m. CT. She’ll be chatting about how to shake off your online persona and will offer tips on how to get back to the creativity you are passionate about.

You’re invited! To celebrate National Mentoring Month, Ten Thousand Coffees is hosting an exclusive event on Thursday, January 27, 2022 at 12:30 p.m. CT.

Join Ten Thousand Coffees for an enlightening webinar with Mark Beckles, Vice-President, Social Impact & Innovation at RBC. Mark will chat about how he has benefited from mentorship in his career and how he has amplified his impact by mentoring others.

For students looking for a summer internship or full-time job, or fresh graduates navigating the next steps in your career, having a mentor can be a game-changer. It can help boost confidence, improve career satisfaction, and provide access to networks that will help you grow your career.

For mid-career and seasoned alumni, connecting with current students and recent grads is an awesome way to give back. You have the experience and skills to make a difference by becoming a mentor for young people who are starting out in their careers. There are also tremendous benefits for you, like building your leadership skills, growing your network, and helping young people find and follow their passions and thrive.

Ten Thousand Coffees CEO Dave Wilkin will host this chat with Mark on January 27 – don’t miss it! The event is free and open to all RRC Polytech students and alumni. Whether you’re already a member of the RRC Polytech Café or new to our mentoring and networking platform, you’re invited to listen in and ask questions!

An innovative Canadian technology and consulting firm has brought its operations to Winnipeg, and along with it, ample opportunity for Red River College Polytechnic graduates.

Traction on Demand (ToD) announced an expansion of its offices to Winnipeg in early 2021. Since then, the certified BCorp has hired dozens of Manitobans with plans to onboard even more. As an RRC Polytech industry partner, many of these hires are Red River College Polytechnic grads.

Headquartered in Burnaby, B.C. with operations across Canada, the United States, India, New Zealand, and Australia, ToD is North America’s largest dedicated Salesforce integrator and consulting firm. May 2021 marked 15 years for the company, and they recently welcomed their 1,000th “Tractionite” to the team.

Two of these Tractionites are Red River College Polytechnic graduates Anton Stroy and Richard Schentag, who joined the company in May 2021 after graduating from the Business Information Technology program in December 2020.

In their roles as developers, Story and Schentag develop custom features for the Salesforce platform and support technology implementation and integration for clients and organizations.

ToD focuses on creating a healthy, positive work environment for its employees, an aspect that both Stroy and Schentag notice and appreciate about the job. While the company has shifted to a remote work environment, their efforts to maintain culture, collaboration, and communication have resulted in the creation of new products, like Traction Gather, a digital engagement hub where weekly internal meetings are held for all employees across the globe.

Traction strives to create a place of belonging, friendship, diversity, accountability, and equity with each other as Tractionites through justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) initiatives. It also aims to harness the power of community to celebrate the inclusion of all humans and to leverage business and relationships as a force for good.

“Traction has a very good culture—it puts people first, and I like this about the company. I was worried when I graduated, as I wanted to find a company where the culture is good, and I wanted to fit in,” said Stroy.

“They make a conscious effort to build culture and trust among the team,” agreed Schentag. “We dedicate time each month to have a one-on-one with another team member. They also want us to set career goals every year. If your team isn’t the right fit for you, you can move to a team that better aligns with your career goals. It’s a great place to excel and to learn.”

Charmaine Jennings will be the first to admit she has her hands full running two small businesses. But the 2013 Red River College Polytechnic grad is living a dream she made her own, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

In addition to owning Strategic Charm Boutique, a small marketing and public relations agency, Jennings is the founder and CEO of Hustle + Charm, a community of women in business across Winnipeg and surrounding areas.

She is a busy woman, so it’s no surprise she talks a mile a minute when you get her on the phone. Jennings founded Strategic Charm Boutique on her own in 2016. There, she and a staff of four women (all hired in the last year, also with Hustle + Charm) help entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their online presence by providing savvy social media and strategy content.

“We have 15 to 20 of those types of clients each month,” says Jennings. “I also have clients who are part of a larger company or community that invite me to do a workshop on social media marketing.” Including those, the boutique agency often has around 25 clients in total.

Instagram is her jam, as Jennings likes to say about the popular photo and video-sharing platform. “With most of our entrepreneurs, usually Instagram is their choice for their target audience. Instagram is quickly turning into an all-encompassing platform, so people need to know how to utilize all aspects of it. That’s where we provide the most help,” she explains. Calling it a powerhouse platform, Jennings said it is only getting stronger, in her view.

At Strategic Charm, Jennings occasionally fields the “make it go viral” request that is somewhat dreaded in her field. “A lot of people want viral content, or they want to increase traffic to their website significantly, overnight, or they need to sell a certain amount of product by the end of the week. We always tell our clients we don’t have the capability to promise that something will go viral. We try to set realistic expectations,” Jennings says.

Before opening Strategic Charm, Jennings earned her communications degree through a joint program between RRC Polytech’s Creative Communications program and the University of Winnipeg, majoring in public relations.

Before she entered CreComm, as the program is commonly known, digital and social media marketing was still a newer concept for businesses. Jennings herself had only a Facebook account at the time. “The more I got to experience social media in CreComm, the more I wanted to specialize in it, as opposed to more traditional marketing,” she says. “Using social media in school got me more interested in using it professionally.”

For many, a relationship with your alma mater begins with admission — some paperwork online, an application, maybe some references.

For Structural Engineering Technology grad Jared Akman, his bond with Red River College Polytechnic started well before that. Back when the College’s Roblin Centre was being constructed in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, Akman was there with his family business — an early teen tasked with cleanup duty on the build site.

That connection between Akman Construction, an industry icon in Winnipeg, and RRC Polytech is at the core of Akman’s career. Though he started with jobs as simple as sweeping floors, it wasn’t long before he was moving up in the industry.

“I worked my way up as the building progressed into a deficiency coordinator,” says Akman. “I started on clean-up to gain an understanding of the complexity of the build and to work alongside the trades in hopes of gaining their respect. That fueled my love for Red River, being involved in the amazing project on Princess Street.”

Since then, Akman has not only graduated from an RRC Polytech Engineering and Construction Technology program — with a diploma in Structural Engineering Technology in 2008 — he’s also worked on a number of other projects, including the new Skilled Trades and Technology Centre at the Notre Dame Campus, and RRC Polytech’s newest expansion to the Exchange District Campus, Manitou a bi Bii daziigae, which opened downtown this fall.

Those projects have come to Akman Construction, a family business that Jared says he always wanted to continue with from a young age. The organization has been in his family since Aaron Akman, a certified carpenter, established the company in 1912 after immigrating to Canada from Russia. The company’s work began by growing the city, constructing single family homes in the North End of Winnipeg.

“I was given the opportunity to choose what field of work I was interested in and get an education in that sector,” says Akman. “But as the fourth generation, it was very important to me to carry on the family legacy.”

Akman credits his experience as an RRC Polytech student with setting his career path in motion. Having looked around at those working at the company, he realized many were already RRC Polytech graduates, including his father, Richard. On the recommendation of his father, Jared decided to get into the program himself.

“That made my decision very easy,” he says. “This was the right path.”

Derek McCorrister watched his father build two different businesses.

“I grew up in his contracting business, and he built a number of homes in Peguis First Nation,” says McCorrister, a graduate of RRC Polytech’s Entrepreneurship program. “I was a helper from a very early age and I saw what he had to do to provide for us.”

As a young adult, McCorrister worked for his father’s second business, a sporting goods store called The Sports Zone, in addition to doing other odd jobs, all while playing competitive hockey. He wanted to become an entrepreneur like his father, but at that time, he was trying to take care of his growing family.

“I had to make a choice for myself and my family to pursue my dream,” he says. 

McCorrister’s parents instilled in him the importance of pursuing an education, and he tried university, but says the setting didn’t work for him.

“I needed more structure and smaller class sizes, so I made the switch over to Red River College Polytechnic, and it was the right choice,” he says. “I only found out years later when I was attending RRC Polytech that my father attended, too.”

McCorrister graduated from the Entrepreneurship program in 2000, around the time his second daughter was born. He says he had many business ideas going into the program, including the inkling that would eventually become his current business, but his big dream was to open a billiard hall and lounge. His favourite part of the program was being surrounded by classmates with the same intention of opening up a business.

“It was cool to see other people doing this research to create something that would shape their future,” he says.

After graduating, McCorrister ended up working for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada’s Economic Development department. He worked extensively with Indigenous businesses and organizations in the private and not-for-profit sectors until he decided to take a leap of faith.

He knew the door to his entrepreneurship dream would close if he remained a civil servant, but that didn’t make it less scary. McCorrister says there were a couple of factors that made the decision challenging — one of them being that his family was continuing to grow and the job with the federal government provided stability and security.

Looking at the story of Eleanor Coopsammy’s career so far, there’s a lot of foreshadowing that she would end up as a journalist.

“I would sit behind a piano and pretend I was an anchor or a teacher. My mom even found an old news script I wrote,” says Coopsammy, a graduate of RRC Polytech’s Creative Communications program.

“I did quite a bit of public speaking when I was younger, and the journalism teacher at my high school asked me if I had thought about a career in radio or TV.”

In her high school yearbook write-up, Coopsammy’s blurb said she was most likely to take over from Oprah Winfrey. While this prediction didn’t quite come true, she did go on to create her own legacy at CTV Winnipeg.

She worked there for 16 years, and in that time, served in many roles and covered everything from politics to consumer trends, eventually becoming the host of CTV Morning Live.

“My first love was news, and I did develop an interest in business stories,” says Coopsammy. “Meeting new people, telling stories, learning about different things — those are all my favourite things.”

Coopsammy double-majored in history and English at the University of Winnipeg, all while holding on to her interest in journalism. She says she heard about the Creative Communications program while at UWinnipeg and was told that it was tough to get in, but she applied anyway and got accepted in 1997.

Coopsammy says the program opened many doors for her career, and instructors like Dean Cooper (who is still a media production instructor at RRC Polytech) had a lot to do with that. At the time, Cooper worked with local studios to revamp the College’s TV studio, and Coopsammy says it created access to opportunities on the television side for students.

She eventually worked at CTV with then-host Joanne Kelly, who is also currently an RRC Polytech instructor, teaching journalism.

“She had a profound effect on me, and I can only imagine the profound impact she is having on tomorrow’s grads.”

Looking back, Coopsammy says she appreciated the networking opportunities the program offered, such as the mentorship program that RRC Polytech developed with female leaders across television and public relations.

It’s an all-female executive team at North Forge Technology Exchange — a fortuitous coincidence at first, but one that now impacts every aspect of operations. 

Same with the mandatory code of conduct — ensuring every person who walks through the organization’s doors is treated with respect — and efforts to maintain an equal ratio of female to male founders in its advanced manufacturing lab and at the Innovation Hub.

And it’s all the doing of Joelle Foster, who moved into her role as the organization’s Chief Executive Officer in February 2020. Since then, North Forge has seen a 294 per cent increase in the number of companies they’re working with. The growth would be impressive at any time, but even more so during a global pandemic.

Foster has also developed a four-stage digital Founders Program, an advanced manufacturing program called AMLab™ and an Angel Network, and will be rolling out a Women in Innovation Lab called WiLab™. Outside of North Forge, she’s also the co-founder and general partner of the Women’s Equity Lab (WEL) Manitoba.

“The tech and advanced manufacturing industries have typically been male-dominated,” says Foster, a graduate of multiple Red River College Polytechnic programs and courses. “I want to make sure that I make an impact, that I can start to change the perception around incubators and accelerators.

“I want a woman to be able to walk into our space at any point and feel welcome, like they belong, and never to feel like it’s all for men and they’re not worthy or respected.”

At North Forge, the success of Foster’s mandate can be seen in the current roster of entrepreneurs, including a female founder who created a pleasure device in the organization’s fabrication lab, a Saskatchewan woman developing a platform geared toward Black business owners, and a duo who designed an innovative cart for new mothers.

“We have a lot of women from across Canada approaching us because of our all-female team,” says Foster. “There are a lot of women with ideas and inventions. Our doors are always open to everybody.”