Akosua Frema Osei-Opare was celebrated as one of the first females to occupy high offices in the West African nation in an article in that country’s GhanaWeb.com. The article celebrates the accomplishments of four Ghanaian women.  

She received a master’s degree in food science from U of G in 1976 and went on to become a lecturer and department head at the University of Ghana. She also worked with the United Nations in the Women in Fisheries project in various capacities in Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo and Namibia, and is a development consultant.  

She served as a deputy minister in the government of president John Agyekum Kufuor and was a two-term member of parliament. She was appointed chief of staff by president Nana Akufo-Addo in 2017.

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She was accompanied on the adventure by her mother, Dr. Ingrid Van Der Linden, also a veterinarian. They both have practices in eastern Ontario. 

The mother and daughter were in Ghana to help farmers increase their income through better feed formulation, as well as improve animal housing and the control and diagnosis of diseases in poultry and livestock. 

Their story made the pages of The Review.

Thomas, who also holds a degree in biology from U of G, is a veterinarian in Almonte, Ont. 

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Articles in The Sarnia Journal and The National Post described her important work in the African country.

Connor graduated from U of G with a masters degree in political science and international development in 2004. 

A senior humanitarian and development professional, she has spent about 15 years in resource mobilization, program management and leadership roles in a number of conflict-affected environments. 

Her work has especially focused on emergency response, food security, child protection and resilience programming. World Vision is currently assisting the country cope with outbreaks of both COVID-19 and Ebola. 

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, she oversees a staff of 400 staff and an annual budget of $40 million.

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A University of Guelph grad leading the fight against wildfires in southern British Columbia is finding that his physics degree has come in handy.

In recent years, Bryce Moreira’s job as aviation specialist with the Kamloops Fire Centre has been intensely demanding, given the highly combustible conditions in B.C.’s forests. But Moreira, 29, says he is able to keep his cool in part because of the practical skills he learned studying physics at U of G.

“When I finished my degree and moved back to B.C., I was unsure of my next step,” said Moreira. “But because of my degree I was able to get a job with the BC Wildfire Service in the winter, a job that was directly applicable to physics.”

He oversees deployment of helicopters for transporting firefighters or dumping water on fires.

Depending on the size of the fire, the response can involve anywhere from one to 30 helicopters. While Moreira is not a pilot himself, he sometimes finds himself in the co-pilot’s seat hovering over a blaze.

Operation parameters change constantly. Pinpoint calculations are needed to ensure the best possible response and outcome, he said.

Controlling a fire is exhausting, he said, but the sense of accomplishment is huge.

“It certainly can be a lot of pressure, but we all accept that pressure as part of the job we have,” he said. “I am looking for the best possible way to control and suppress the fire and to protect life and property. You have to take it one task at a time.”

His U of G education gave him a good foundation for understanding physics and its varied applications. His job mostly involves analysis and organization of complex and urgent firefighting strategies. The more fires burning, the more involved the strategy becomes. The skills in data analysis he learned at U of G have been indispensable in his work, he said.

The 2017 and 2018 fire seasons were the most extreme in the province’s history, burning more forest and forcing more evacuations than ever before. This year, conditions improved.

Moreira said the recent spike in the number and size of fires has been fuelled by climate change. Dry conditions caused by a lack of snowfall in winter and extreme temperatures in spring and summer are the major contributor, a perspective backed up in a recent study by Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Extreme fire seasons are likely to become more common as global temperatures continue to rise, according to the study.

In 2018, 2,117 fires covered more than 1.3 million hectares of land and cost the province $615 million to fight; in 2017, 1,500 fires covered more than 1.2 million hectares and cost about $650-million to fight. On average, about 42 per cent of fires are caused by people and 57 per cent by lightning.

“There is so much math involved in a physics program, and math explains things in a very technical and rudimentary way,” he said. “It helps explain the principles of how things operate and gives you an appreciation for larger ideas based on these simple principles.”

Originally from British Columbia, Moreira completed his U of G degree in 2013. He spent summers in Kamloops working for the BC Wildfire Service, a job that he began while in high school.

He gained hands-on experience fighting fires and landed a full-time job because of his ability to analyze data and solve problems.

“Being able to understand things from their basic principles and seeing the root cause helped me to solve unique problems that come up day-to-day in my work,” he said.

As a top high school volleyball player, Moreira competed for two years on the provincial team. He was an assistant coach on the Gryphons women’s volleyball team in 2012-13.

“Typically, I had a pretty good eye for technical skills,” said Moreira, who now coaches varsity volleyball in B.C. “I was able to add technical expertise and to support the whole team.”

With two record-breaking wildfire years in the province, recent fire seasons have been tough on crews and coordinators, he said. During time off, he gets rest and stays physically active to deal with the stress.

Moreira said it is difficult to witness the destruction wreaked on B.C.’s environment, but he credits his U of G education for his ability to focus on minimizing the damage.

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The national program director of Autism Speaks Canada is the 2018 Young Alumni Award recipient for U of G’s Alumni Awards of Excellence. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 2005.

The philosophy she studied at the University of Guelph changed her perspective, changed her mind and changed her life.

“I had taken a bunch of philosophy classes and loved them,” she says. “I didn’t actually know where it was going to lead me, but I really wanted to do what I enjoyed. Something inside of me said this was an opportunity for me to grow.”

In her final year, she changed her major, diving headlong into philosophy despite the protests of many who warned she was making a bad decision, one that could bar the way to a rewarding career.

But philosophy helped her to reflect deeply, not so much on what she wanted to do with her life but on how she wanted to be in life.

“That was the big shift that happened for me here at Guelph,” says Rhee. “I’ve carried that with me all the way through, and that’s how I found my career.”

Esther is recognized nationally for her leadership in promoting mental health and raising awareness of autism. She pioneered a community collaborative model that changed the way families impacted by autism are supported in Canada.

After U of G, Rhee spent lots of time philosophically considering what would make her the best person she could be and where she could do the most good.

“I started networking, and I realized that I wanted to go into the helping field,” she says. She followed the advice of an early mentor, who told her to focus on building great relationships, because from them would come great things. She began volunteering in the area of childhood trauma exposure around the same time.

“I loved what I did, but it was very heavy. My worldview changed, and I had to take a break and remove myself from that.”
Attending to her inner “who am I” voice and following her desire to help others led her to do a master of social work at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The universe was truly giving me an opportunity

Just as she was completing that degree, she received an offer to work for a new organization dedicated to improving understanding of autism. Philosophically and emotionally, it seemed like the right thing to do. She accepted, after some trepidation.

“I actually said on the phone, ‘I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know a lot about autism at all.’ But it was one of those situations where it really seemed like the universe was truly giving me an opportunity to do something different. And I thought, why not?”

She conjured up all she had learned as a philosophy major at U of G, switched her mindset and started a not-for-profit organization, Autism Services Waterloo Region, focusing on helping people with autism and their families. After three years, she moved to Autism Speaks Canada based in Toronto, where she has helped build hundreds of programs across the country.

Rhee had many great experiences at U of G, but one of her most noteworthy, she said, was a close bond she had with a laboratory rat.

“We were in the lab all the time teaching them tricks and conditioning them, and that was truly one of my favourite memories. I ended up adopting that rat afterwards. People often knew me as the girl who had the pet rat at Guelph.”

She calls her time at U of G “transformative,” a time of growing confidence and independence.

“When I look back over my whole career trajectory, I had no idea where life was going to take me. And that was a great thing, to be open and to just trust – to trust who I wanted to be and that it would bring wonderful things.”

She calls her work a dream job, one that affords her the privilege of addressing Canadian members of Parliament and spread awareness about autism. She has many public speaking engagements throughout the year and is involved in numerous exciting projects, all aimed at helping people.

“I’m really proud that I stuck to my values and I never forgot why I got into all of this, why I wanted to get into social work, and it was just to give, to serve and support other people.”

Rhee returns often to U of G to see her favourite professors and to speak with students about life after university. What does she tell them?

“I say, ‘Take your blinders off.’ Some of the opportunities that are going to present themselves after graduation don’t even exist right now. There’s no way we can predict what that path will look like, so truly focus on who you want to be, what your values are and what direction you want to go in.”

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Carvalho received her MFA in studio art at U of G, and has received numerous grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she lives in Toronto.

Her paintings have foreboding undertones, exploring themes of time, darkness and withdrawal through images heavy with ecological destruction.

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Gillian Siddall will take over the top job at the prestigious Vancouver-based art school on Sept. 1. The story of her hiring appeared in the Vancouver Sun and other media across Canada.

Siddall served as vice-president academic and provost for three years at Toronto’s OCAD University. She lectured at U of G before becoming an English professor at Lakehead University, where she was named dean of social sciences and humanities. She earned a PhD from Western University.

An advocate of Indigenization and decolonization within the university sector, Siddall is also recognized as an accomplished jazz vocalist and choral singer. She co-founded the Guelph Jazz Festival.

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