Shelly (Michelle) Burich (Hood) ’90 won the Canadian Public Relations Society Don Rennie Memorial Award for excellence in government communications. Terry Flynn, assistant professor in the DeGroote School of Business, is the society’s new president. Burich resides in Williams Lake and works for the Cariboo Regional District as manager of communications and protocol. Shirley Forsyth ’92 was appointed director, leadership development at Sun Life Financial in Waterloo. Forsyth is also completing an M.Ed. degree at Brock University, and recently completed her 14th full marathon and 25th half marathon. She also volunteers with the Bay Area Leadership program through Volunteer Hamilton. Rosemary (Larmour) Godin ’95 was ordained in the United Church of Canada in May and is serving the pastoral charge of Moorefield-Rothsay in Ontario. This change brings her back to Ontario after a 25-year career as a journalist and politician in the Halifax area. Martha Gulati ’91, a preventive cardiologist at Northwestern University, and other health care professionals participated in a roundtable discussion on health insurance reform with U.S. vice-president Joe Biden last August at Chicago’s Sinai Community Institute. Michael Heenan ’95 has joined the Credit Valley Hospital as director of quality, performance and risk management. An MBA graduate, he is now a part-time sessional lecturer in Health Services Management at the DeGroote School of Business and resides in Milton with his wife and daughter.
Amanda Jamieson-Bain ’97 and her husband, Adam, welcomed their second son July 28, 2009. Colten Christopher Jamieson Bain joins his two-year-old brother Peyton. Jamieson-Bain is currently on leave from her personal training and pilates instructing job in Mississauga. Catherine Krasnik ’97, a thirdyear psychiatry resident who has also earned her MD, PhD, B.Sc. and Arts & Science degrees from McMaster, was awarded the APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellowship in Public Psychiatry. Andrew Lockie ’96 is the new executive director of the United Way of London & Middlesex. Brenda Matthews ’94 and Ed Matthews were married in June 2008 in Victoria, B.C. They welcomed their first child, Kara Aisling Matthews, on May 10, 2009. Brenda works with the National Research Council’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. John T. Mayberry ’99 joined the board of directors of Fort Reliance. He started with Dofasco in 1967 and joined the executive in 1987. He was president and CEO from 1993 to 2002 and chairman and CEO from 2002 to 2003. He is now the chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia. Kaede Ota ’98, a research fellow with the Hospital for Sick Children, is a certified diplomat of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.
Shoes for equality Tal Dehtiar and workers in his Ethiopian plant examine a design for one of the premium urban-casual Oliberté shoes made from Liberian rubber. Wearing a three-piece suit and climbing the corporate ladder was never in Tal Dehtiar’s ’05 plans. The McMaster business graduate had another idea: he would empower those less fortunate around the globe, treat them equally and pay them fairly. With his hugely successful charitable organization MBAs Without Borders and a new footwear company, Oliberté, in Africa, the 29-year-old has achieved his goal. Dehtiar helped launch MBAs Without Borders in 2004 while an MBA student in the DeGroote School of Business. The charity has established 100 projects in 25 countries, ranging from creating renewable energy products in Nicaragua to establishing health insurance programs in India. Since the business was acquired last year by CDC Development Solutions, Dehtiar has ramped up his new business, Oliberté, which manufactures urban casual shoes made from Liberian rubber and Ethiopian leather. The shoes are made at a small rubber-processing plant in Ethiopia and exported around the world. The shoes can also be ordered at the Oliberté website: www.oliberte.com. “With the shoe company, the more shoes we sell, the more people we employ and the bigger impact we have,” he says. “We’re not a charity. It’s not about starving children. What we want to do is treat Africans equally and pay them fairly. This is a great way to showcase Africa to the world; to show that Africa is here and has potential in the world market.” Oliberté is the first company to market premium urbancasual footwear exclusively made in Africa. This season, Dehtiar will appear on CBC Television’s Dragon’s Den, a program showcasing entrepreneurs pitching business ideas for investment from top business brains.
McMaster Times - Winter 2010
27
Alumni Album
Jasmine Albagli ’99 gave birth to Sophia Allison Albagli-Hansen on July 24, 2009 in Ottawa.
Chantall Van Raay
1990s
Damian Holsinger ’99 is a lecturer in neuroscience and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience in the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney. After graduating from McMaster, he completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne. He now lives in Sydney with his wife, Natalie, and two children, Mitchell and Olivia.