Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) introduced a new business model for charitable giving. “We were the first ones to create the regular donation model," said Dr. Joanne Liu (MDCM'91, IMHL'14, DSc'16), an emergency physician, a professor at the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University, and the 13th President of MSF (2013-2019). “One of our first fundraising campaigns was 1 euro per day,” Liu said in an interview with Prof. Karl Moore for Forbes.com. “And another big innovation was the no opt-out approach.
Vaginal prosthetics known as pessaries are a critical tool for the maintenance of pelvic health in women. They are used as a first-line treatment for pelvic organ prolapse, a common condition that occurs when the muscles of the pelvis weaken, causing organs to drop into the vagina. But these devices are badly in need of an upgrade. Their failure rate is high, and the designs have changed little in the last 70 years.
Quebec’s homicide rate is lower than it was a decade ago, but a slight majority of people that live in cities aren’t feeling as safe as they used to. This rests in the public’s perception that there is a lack of organization, according Fady Dagher (EMBA’12), Chief of Police in Longueuil, in an interview with TVA’s Le monde à l’envers. But the way that violent crime is occurring contributes to that fear – there are more guns and drugs on the street, and lockdowns have had a pronounced impact on low-income neighbourhoods.
Insects have always been part of the diet of cats and dogs – but they haven’t always been a part of the pet foods that we feed them. That’s changing, and a company with McGill roots is helping drive a transformation in the industry. Aspire Food Group cultivates crickets to produce high-quality protein with a low environmental footprint. Their plant in London, Ontario, will be the world’s largest, fully automated cricket production and processing facility, and Aspire sees plenty of potential for growth.
Montreal is getting a new team in the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), a professional women’s hockey league – and it will have Desautels representation. Ann-Sophie Bettez (BCom’11) is a forward for the team, and was the 2011-12 CIS Player of the Year. The Montreal Force will be playing its home games across Quebec this year, and Montreal, Gatineau, Quebec City, Rimouski, Rivière-du-Loup, Saint-Jerome, and Sept-Iles are all possible host cities.
Animal welfare and a desire to reduce carbon emissions inspired Betty Zoller (MBA’15) to adopt a vegetarian diet. But when Zoller was looking for a nut-free cheese alternative, there weren’t any options. Many plant-based cheese alternatives are made using a base of cashew nuts or coconut oil, and seeing a gap in the available options, Zoller founded Aviva. The Montreal-based company uses chick peas, lentils, beans and seeds to make plant-based alternatives for common cheeses like cheddar, gouda and feta.
The influential business school news site Poets&Quants has named McGill-HEC MontrĂ©al EMBAs Jean-Pierre Michael ˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýCarlos Andrade to its 2022 Best & Brightest Executive MBA list. The graduates were among 101 individuals selected from 49 top business schools around the world for personifying excellence – be it academic performance, extracurricular involvement, or professional achievement.
Leaders should spend less time worrying about people who leave, and more time celebrating those that stay, according to Samer Saab (BEng’93, MBA’96), the CEO of Explorance, a leading experience management solutions company.
In an era of talent scarcity, the balance of power between employer and employee has shifted, Saab told Medium.com in an interview for Authority Magazine.
McGill celebrated its bicentennial in 2021, and as the university community began looking toward the next hundred years, it launched the Third Century Challenge Fund. Created by Chancellor Emeritus Michael Meighen, it encourages others to give by matching funds. Forty-eight new scholarships and bursaries have been created since the launch of the fund in 2019, and Chafik Hamad (MBA’15) is one of the donors who took up the call.
Congratulations to Alice Félix da Silva (BCom’22) on being recognized by Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), the United Nations' largest initiative to advance responsible management education in the world, for her outstanding contributions while representing McGill Desautels as the 2021/22 PRME Global Students (PGS) Regional Leader in North America!
Craig Buntin (MBA’13) represented Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, but during the lead-in to the 2010 Games in Vancouver, the pairs figure skater sustained torn ligaments in his shoulder that would prevent him from competing on home ice. It was a setback, but he ably pivoted toward the next chapter. Buntin went on to complete an MBA at Desautels, and is now the CEO of SportLogiq, a Montreal-based company that uses standard sports game footage to track players and generate automated game statistics.
Théadora Sauvé (BCom’22) believes that the power of the Law can be a powerful tool in making peace. The 2022 Valedictorian has plans to study Law at McGill, and was recently named one of 11 purposeful women leaders who are positively impacting the world. Sauvé has taken on a leadership role with Million Peacemakers, a youth initiative that seeks to co-create a culture of peace. To promote conflict resolution, the organization plans to work with other youth-led organizations and educational institutions.
Kimberly Quinn (BA’99, BA’01, EMBA’21) was on the lookout for new opportunities to learn when she came across the McGill-HEC Montréal Executive program, which stood out for its bilingual structure and its Scholarship for Managers of Indigenous Origin.
For Robert Auclair (EMBA’22), another of the scholarship’s recipients, the EMBA was the perfect way to uphold his family legacy by following in his mother’s footsteps, all while fulfilling a personal goal.
When Louis Morissette (BCom’95) was studying at Desautels, he was also performing in comedy shows. And when he went to the École Nationale de l’humour, he found himself wondering what the business plan for comedy could be.
In the years since then, he’s figured it out. Morissette is the co-founder and President of the production company KOTV and has been an actor and producer for television and film.
The McGill Sports Hall of Fame is honouring Desautels graduate Ann-Sophie Bettez (BCom '11) as part of its Class of 2022. Bettez’s induction follows a decorated university hockey career in which she was named the CIS rookie of the year as a first-year student, and Canadian university hockey player of the year as a senior. That same year, Bettez was also McGill's top female athlete and won the BLG Award as Canada’s top female student-athlete.