Career Day Speakers

Ian Robertson ’55 began his Career Day keynote speech by admitted that, as a boy, he hated it when his parents asked him what he wanted to do for a living.

Prophetically, he wrote in the Selwyn House yearbook that he wanted to be a naturalist, in spite of his misgivings about what the job really entails. “I didn’t know what the choices were.” He confesses. “I didn’t want to admit I hadn’t thought about it.”

Even by age 27, he admits, his career had somehow “failed to launch.”

Changes in his parents’ financial situation had affected his academic pursuits. Still, he says, “I never felt short-changed, then or now. I never felt my parents owed me an education.”

He moved to Vancouver, ostensibly to study law at the University of British Columbia. Instead, he discovered the presence of nature in the city. One day, he stopped in at UBC zoology building and applied for a summer job counting ducks and geese. “I never got to law school,” he says, and the rest is history.

He went on to work as a consultant to the federal government, and now has had his own firm for more than 15 years, helping clients meet the statutory and regulatory requirements for environmental assessment of projects such as highways, power dams, wind farms, mines, land development, pipelines and transmission lines.

“Your career path may be non-linear,” he told the students. “There can be setbacks along the way.” Reflecting on his career, he now says, “I was lucky that I did not set out on a clear career path.”

“Life is not always going to work out,” he said. “Nurse your dream and don’t be afraid to pursue it with passion.”

Practical tips: “Be literate,” and prepare yourself for interviews.

Eventually, he says, “Things you have to do are the things you like to do. Stay hungry about that interest, and stay hungry about your dream.”

Trevor Ahmedali ’97 explained to students at Career Day that his career path in the computer industry was marked by an important fork in the road: whether to concentrate on hardware or software. He chose the latter and, in retrospect, he feels his choice turned out to be the right one.

Trevor is employed by Nokia, the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer. He works in the messaging software division in Montreal, designing and developing software for email, instant-messaging and social networking on cell phones. But he could have worked for any number of companies. “Every industry has a use for software engineers,” he says.

When still a student at Selwyn House, he liked science, but knew he was more interested in engineering than pure science. “There is more problem solving, more creativity in engineering,” he says. “It’s more hands-on.”

He studied Pure and Applied Science in CEGEP and earned a BS and an M.Eng degree in computer engineering at McGill, studying at the Centre for Intelligent Machines. “Then the tech bubble burst.”

Trevor was able to land a job with Montreal’s Oz Communications, which has now been acquired by Nokia.

Software engineers are employed by “a huge variety of companies,” Trevor says. Other advantages include the opportunity to learn a lot on the job and a chance to work with the latest technology.

The downside is the ever-present danger of finding your job outsourced.

Required skills include: problem-solving ability, competence in math, a knack for teamwork and good communication skills, especially written.

Networking is important for getting foot in the door, Trevor says. “All the jobs I’ve had have come to me though contacts and people I know.”

Bryan Fitzpatrick ’74 found his career the old-fashioned way, by going to work for his father. And it has led him to the top of the construction and development industry. As vice president of AXOR, Bryan has amassed over 30 years’ experience building everything from silos in Joliette to a $180-M hydroelectrical installation in the middle of the Indonesian jungle.

At Career Day, a show of hands revealed that less than half the students in his audience were studying science. “At SHS I had no idea where I was headed,” he admitted. “Things just fell into place.”

“Don’t worry—you’ll find your route.”

After earning his BSc at Queen’s, Bryan went to work for Fitzpatrick Construction for three years, starting out digging ditches and moving up to being a project manager. He then went back to school to get his MBA. He feels it’s a good idea to get two or three years of on-the-job experience before completing one’s education. “They’re long years, but it’s fun,” he says.

Bryan showed a number of slides of AXOR projects, including the landmark UQAM building, the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, an underground reservoir on Van Horne, E-Commerce Place, various buildings for Bombardier, the tennis centre at Jarry Park, design for the Expos stadium that never got built, a wharf in Indonesia, a metro station in Buffalo, an airport terminal in Belfast, Ireland, and a 100-MW 133-turbine wind power project in the Gaspé.

“It’s a big management role I do,” he explains. It’s his job to hire the architects and construction engineers, review estimations, and ensure that a project is completed on time and on budget.

“I work with a lot of numbers. I still go out to the sites. I used to run them.”

“It’s a people’s business,” he adds. “It’s communication-oriented.”

And it’s still a growth industry. “Even with an economy in bad shape, our industry is booming.”

As a United Nations peacekeeper, Tim Reid ’82 has worked with some of the best and worst people on earth.

He has served in some of the hottest spots in the world, from Lebanon to Rwanda, the Congo, Ethopia and Eritrea, South Africa, Cambodia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the West Bank and Gaza.

He has dealt with soldiers and civilians, monitored elections and ceasefires, protected civilians, opened schools, dealt with ragtag militias and corrupt politicians, child soldiers and brutal warlords, witnessed devastation, and investigated massacres.

“But you do meet a lot of extraordinary human beings,” he says, “and I have worked with many intelligent, courageous colleagues.”

Tim had an interest in political issues from an early age. He was on Quebec debating team while at Selwyn House, and later worked as a scrutineer in federal and provincial elections. He went on to Brébeuf, Université de Montréal, law school, the Canadian Army, and studied at Harvard.

“If I had it to do all over again, I would skip law school,” he confided. “Law school takes such a long time, and most of the guys in my class are no longer practicing law.”

The life of a UN peacekeeper is far from peaceful. “Oftentimes the UN is blamed for everything—rightly or wrongly,” he says. The UN is plagued with “lots of complicated, tedious bureaucracy, and many employees are lazy or incompetent.” And it can get worse, as when UN workers become targets of warlords or rogue militias.

On a personal level, “It’s very difficult to have a normal family or social life.”

But, he says “For all the frustrations, you can make a real difference.”

Tony Stikeman ’61 came to Career Day billed as “one of Ottawa’s most seasoned government relations practitioners,...a consultant to a broad range of Canadian and international companies.”

In his talk to students, he began by clarifying that he is a lobbyist, and was eager to dispel the attitude that had, in the past, given his profession “a bad rap.”

“That was then,” he said. “Now lobbying is open and transparent.”

From an early age, his interests could have foretold his career path. “This school fed my interests in public speaking and debating,” he recalled about his years at Selwyn House. “That, in turn, fed my interests in politics, public policy and intergovernmental relations.”

A political science graduate, he now finds himself to be “one of the few people I know who studied political science and still actually practices it.”

He began his career in 1970 as special assistant to Hon. M. (Bud) Drury, President of the Treasury Board, a man he describes as “one of my great heroes.”

As citizens, he says, “We have a responsibility to ourselves to communicate with government.” That is where lobbyists come in. Their job is to figure out how to move the interests of a particular group to the top of the inbox of members of Parliament.

Clients and issues can range from Canadian songwriters pushing for legislation on music downloading, police forces on wiretapping, an Alberta mining company on clean coal, the Canadian Forces on helicopter contracts, Pratt and Whitney on hydrogen fuel cells, or Natives looking for financial compensation.

“We have to understand government and how it works,” says Tony. “We’re competing for MPs’ time and attention.” In exchange, he says, “The government will tell us candidly what the real situation is.”

In a typical day, a lobbyist would spend a typical day reading newspapers, speaking with clients about recent developments in Parliament, monitoring question period, sitting in on parliamentary committees.

“Everyone in Ottawa owns part of everyone else’s decisions,” he says. “You don’t beat someone up, because you have to work with them.”

“Whatever you do, it’s all about people. Understand them, respect them.”

If you want to go into medicine as a career, “Take advantage of opportunities you might have to explore the world and to discover new situations and get a little outside your comfort zone,” advises Dr. Kevin Schwartzman, respirologist at the Montreal Chest Institute and the Royal Victoria Hospital, and faculty member at McGill University.

To help pay for his bachelor’s degree in history and science at Harvard, Dr. Schwartzman cleaned the bathrooms on the campus as a part-time job. “If you want to perceive your goals, those are some of the things you have to do,” he says.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, he went on to study Medicine at McGill and did three years of Internal Medicine and two years of respirology at McGill. He returned to Harvard to complete a Master’s Degree in public health, and did some additional research training in epidemiology at McGill.

“A medical career is busy, challenging intellectually and other ways as well,” says Dr. Schwartzman. In an average week, he sees patients for two or three half-days. He also performs bronchoscopies and other procedures, does clinical research in understanding the spread of Tuberculosis, evaluates interventions designed to treat or prevent the disease, attends committee meetings and does consulting work.

He is also a tenured professor at McGill and is Training Program Director at McGill for lung diseases. “No two weeks are the same,” he says.

He says that “medicine today involves extensive teamwork. You work closely with other physicians who have complementary expertise, as well as with nurses and other health professionals.” He told the story of a 20-year-old girl who was eventually diagnosed with a rare type of fungal infection after much “detective” work by the group of physicians involved in the case.

 “Medicine is both an art and a science,” Dr Schwartzman says. “Academics are important but are not the only ingredient.”

The ability to read carefully, write well, communicate face to face, to think creatively and critically, and understand literature and current events are all equally important. Extracurricular activities and community service, which help to develop teamwork and leadership abilities, are also definite assets.

He suggests shadowing a doctor to see what it is really like.

As Dr. Schwartzman says, “Medicine is a field that is rapidly evolving. Doctors will always be needed.  It is a career that can be stressful and challenging, but also fulfilling.”



“It really was like a bolt of lightning,” Dr. Lisa Koski said, when she suddenly realized that what she wanted to do was to become a neuropsychologist.

At the end of high school, Dr. Koski was told that she wasn’t college material because none of her interests were in line with any of the common professions or careers at the time. After working at Tim Horton’s while trying to think of what she could do with her life, she decided to go to the University of Toronto to study languages. In her first year, she was forced to do one science course, so she chose psychology, as her math wasn’t good enough for any other science course. In her psychology textbook she read about Dr. Brenda Milner, a famous neuropsychologist at the Montreal Neurological Institute, who had been studying memory loss. Dr. Koski was so inspired by the work that Dr. Milner had done that she realized that this was exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She switched majors to psychology and neuroscience and finished her four-year bachelor’s degree. She worked for almost nothing as a summer student in research so that she could apply to graduate school. She went on to do graduate studies and then did postdoctoral training in brain imaging in the U.S. and is now a clinical scientist, an assistant professor at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, and Director of the Royal Victoria Hospital Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Lab.

Dr. Koski explained that neuropsychology is the study of how the brain and the mind work together to perform mental tasks, such as vision, hearing (how we understand sound), touch (how we move our muscles), smell and taste (how these senses are linked; e.g. we can’t taste well if we can’t smell). Dr. Koski’s main areas of interest are stroke, where there are sudden problems with movements or speech, Alzheimer’s disease, a disease which causes gradual memory loss, and multiple sclerosis, a disease of the immune system. According to Dr. Koski, someone could say “wow, that’s scary,” when faced with one of these problems or they could say “hey, that sucks... Let’s find out why this is happening, and how can we find a way to fix it.” Her job as a neuropsychologist deals with finding ways to fix these problems.

Dr. Koski’s research involves various methods such as cognitive training, mirror therapy and motor-skill practice to improve a person’s mobility. She is also doing research using a magnetic stimulating coil, which is put on a person’s head. This can increase the brain activities in a certain area and could possibly alleviate depression or help someone recover mobility after a stroke.

A typical day in the life of a neuropsychologist could start off  by answering email, and move on to holding a lab meeting with staff and graduate students, and from there to seeing an elderly  patient  to test for mental abilities.

What do you need to be able to do be a neuropsychologist? “Perseverance,” Dr. Koski says. “It can be frustrating to get results that don’t turn out the way you think they will, or if a patient doesn’t show up.” Motivation, determination and optimism are also important, as well as good communication skills. One area that Dr. Koski says she wishes she had been trained in is the area of administration and accounting. When applying for government grants, these skills can come in handy.

After studying neuropsychology, someone could work as a professor, a government scientist, a patent officer, or in industry, such as in a drug or other treatment development company (which, according to Dr. Koski, is more lucrative).

The cons of being a neuropsychologist include,  the long training time (could be as much as eight years or even longer), having to chase after government grants, no possibility of fortune, as well as the responsibility for the integrity of the scientific work.

On the positive side, Dr. Koski feels that she has followed her passion. Her list of pros of the job outweighs the cons. She is the boss and decides to some degree what she is going to study;  there is interesting travel involved; there is a great deal of variety and flexibility in the work; there could be possible fame if her research is successful; and the bottom line is that the results of the research could, someday, help someone.

“W = F x M x D”: a simple formula Dr. Ron Clavier wrote on the board at the start of his Career Day presentation. He went on to explain how family influences our paths, even if we don’t know it at the time. For example, he decided to study the mind after being really ticked off at the way his cousins, who were mentally ill, were treated by others. Yes he agrees, they were different, but they did not deserve to be treated badly.

That was his motivation, or mass (M), something he deeply cared about changing and that was important to him. That is what you boys should be asking yourselves; ‘what is wrong in the world according to you, what would you change’?

Science is not taught directly, chemistry, physics and biology are tools you use to get from beliefs to knowledge. We are all philosophers; someone with an answer to a question. A scientist is an activist philosopher. Invest in your personal relations, your occupation, and your beliefs to find out what you should do with your life.

There are four things that are payoff for work: money, time, passion and contribution to society.  You have to decide which ones are more important to you. When he had a young family, Dr. Clavier decided that time was more important than money and went on to become a clinical psychologist as opposed to a research scientist. It gave him freedom and he could help people one at a time.

He had to treat his practice as a business in order to become successful, which is what most jobs are: offering a product or service to a market of buyers at a profit.

Really, work (W) equals the force we all have (F), when we use it to move our mass (M) over a certain distance (D).

Even when James Nadler ’78 was in school at Selwyn House, he wanted to tell stories. He is doing that now, writing and creating his own television series, a live-action family comedy show called Family Biz.

He learned about the TV industry working as a senior policy analyst, eventually moving to the creative side, which is what he really wanted. He says his career “picked him.” Now, as executive producer and showrunner for Family Biz, James is able to make the ultimate creative decisions for the show. He is responsible for hiring, casting, editing, sound and music, as well as working on renewal for the next season.

With a BA in film studies, a law degree and an MBA, James is well equipped to handle all aspects of the film production business. With a $10.6 million budget, he says that management skills are an asset. James says being able to multitask is really important. While he is writing one episode, he is shooting another, editing a third, and also working on music and sound spotting. Teamwork is also important; being good at persuading people to do things they don’t want to do is a producer’s biggest job, he says.

The TV production business is extremely competitive. It can also be unfair. Shows can get picked arbitrarily and sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality of the show. There can be a lot of travel required, and there can be a lot of stress in the job, especially when under pressure to finish an episode in less than three days. Income can also be unpredictable.

On the other hand, James says TV production is fun. “You are surrounded by people who enjoy what they do,” he says. “You can be creative, and most of all you get to tell stories.”

“You never know who is watching you,” says Jim Popp, General Manager, Vice-President, Director of Football Operations and Director of Playing Personnel for the Montreal Alouettes.

As he explained on Career Day, Jim’s father was a football coach. His mother stayed home to raise the kids but would go on to own and manage five different businesses later in her life. His sister is a highly successful lawyer who worked with the FBI, and his brother is in the media business.

Those things all influenced what Jim would become. He always wanted to be a professional athlete and went to Michigan State University on a football scholarship. Unfortunately, he tore his knee in his first year and was told he would never play again. He proved them wrong and came back to play, but also became a better student and got a degree in telecommunications.

He found his niche since he wanted to be in football and started coaching until someone noticed him at a camp he was in charge of and gave him a business card, which eventually would lead him to Regina, Saskatchewan. He had no clue where that was when he went for the interview. “In the United States, you do not learn a lot about other countries,” he says.

“You boys make sure you know what you are talking about,” he told the Selwyn House students. “Earn respect, listen and learn.”

 He closed with a few watchwords for the boys: family – a great stability factor; faith – believe in something and have an open mind; goals – they will change all the time, go forward, don’t look back, make decisions; educate yourself – learn about people; create your own luck – put yourself in the right position for something good to happen; pick a role model; be honest and build trust; have a vision; challenge yourself and don’t do everything just for money!

“Everything you do during your scholastic career could relate to a possible job you are going to have tomorrow,” says Vince Guzzo ’86.

As executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Cinémas Guzzo, Vince has had to use many of the skills that he learned throughout his years of education in order to successfully oversee the complex business of running a chain of movie theatres.

He remembers using something he learned in math class back in Grade 9. In 1998, when trying to calculate the distance of the projector through the middle of the screen in a stadium situation for one of his theatres, he realized that it was in the shape of a right triangle and was able to use the Pythagorean Theorem for calculating the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle to help solve his problem!

Movie exhibition is the main part of the work in which Cinemas Guzzo is involved. It may seem like a simple task, but there is always a risk in whether or not people go to the movies. After investing millions of dollars into his theatres, Vince has to do a good job at convincing people that going to one of his theatres to see a movie will be worth their while.

Although he has never worked as a lawyer, his law degree has been a real asset for every lease that he has needed to sign, or every theatre acquisition that he has done.

Skills he learned from his degree in business from Western have also been put to good use when he has had to make decisions about such things as purchasing new digital projectors for each of his screens. At $150,000 a projector, times 151 screens, this is quite a business risk to take.

The words on the door of his office that say “The Closer” describe part of the job that Vince has to do. At the end of the day he is the one who is responsible for closing any deals that the company works hard to get. He works 365 days a year, and often uses his two cell phones at one time to answer the many calls that he gets every day.

Vince says that people skills are important in the movie business when doing any kind of negotiations, whether it is dealing with movie distributors or dealing with his 650 employees.