After 13 years as San Francisco Ballet’s director of production, Christopher returned to The National Ballet of Canada’s senior management team as director of production in August 2023. Chris served as resident lighting designer and lighting coordinator at the National Ballet for 14 years and has also worked with the Metropolitan Opera and Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. Chris is also an accomplished lighting designer who has worked with the American Ballet Theatre, Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Boston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and West Australian Ballet.

Joe took home the gold award at the 2024 Digital Publishing Awards in the Best Science & Technology Storytelling category for his article, “Meet the gig workers making AI models smarter,” published in The Globe and Mail.

Russell is the host of the award-winning Contributors podcast. Each episode, Russell engages with top executives to explore how they and their organizations are making strategic decisions today to secure a better and brighter future for Canada. Past guests have included Stephen Poloz, former governor of the Bank of Canada; Susan Black, CEO of the Conference Board of Canada and Rola Dagher (TMU honorary doctorate recipient, ’23), Global Channel chief at Dell Technologies.

“I started my own business, Icarus Aviation Engineering, 10 years ago, which has grown to over 20 people. We are a major competitor in the aerospace industry.”

Omar received the Accessibility Award at the 2023 City of Pickering Civic Awards for making significant or ongoing contributions, beyond legislative requirements, to the well-being and advancement of people with accessibility requirements. Omar was presented his award by Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe and City Councillor Lisa Robinson.

Gay died on September 11, 2024, at the age of 93. She grew up in Ottawa, working in the catering division of her family’s food business. After graduation, she cooked, catered and ran commercial kitchens across Europe, the U.S. and South America. Gay became a beloved figure in Ottawa’s culinary community, writing a food column for the Ottawa Sun and a weekly “Taste of the Town” column for the Ottawa Citizen. In 2000, she published a cookbook, Mrs. Cook’s Kitchen, Basics and Beyond. Gay also freelanced for food magazines, consulted for cookware companies, made appearances on TV and radio shows and ran a cooking school.

Bill died on Oct. 6, 2023. Born and raised in Toronto, Bill entered the workforce in sales, taking a job with General Electric and settling in Syracuse, N.Y., where he remained until retirement. Highlights of his career include travelling to Korea, Taiwan, Ecuador, Israel and Europe to service clients such as the U.S. Air Force, NATO and other international air forces.

Based in Brooklyn, N.S., Avard has been photographing people and places for nearly 40 years. His social landscape photographs capture moments frozen in time, often reminiscent of a bygone era. Avard’s work was shown in Toronto for the Contact Photography Festival, featuring around 250 digital images from his archives collections. He had a solo exhibit at ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax titled “Toronto Now and Then” and is working on a new self-published book of street photos from the 1980s called The Torontonians, an homage to Robert Frank’s 1959 book, The Americans.