5 minute read
Class Acts
Lola Flomen ’15 & Tony de Fougerolles ’82
Lola Flomen ’15: Working Herself Out of a Job
BY ELIANA CHOW, WRITER
Lola Flomen ’15
When Lola Flomen ’15 was nine years old, she developed an ear infection that required her to stay home from school. While she was channel surfing, hoping to find the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, she stumbled across the World Vision channel. For three hours straight she watched a special about children in Malawi, transfixed as she witnessed girls her age wearing torn clothing and embracing dolls made from banana leaves.
“It was the first time I’d ever seen poverty depicted in that way,” she shares. “When my mother came home from work, I told her I had to do something about it.”
Now, as a technical learning consultant at Population Services International (PSI), Lola sees her role as passing on skills and knowledge to be used by local researchers in enacting and upholding change in their own communities.
“My number one goal is to work myself out of a job,” she says. “The day I can’t defend my job is the day I shouldn’t be there. ”
Lola is quick to acknowledge that large non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like PSI operate like businesses. “At PSI, we treat the people we work with as our clients and help them measure the impact of their solutions through data, such as consumer habits, changes in the local economy, and dynamic family planning needs,” she explains. “You can set up everything right—hire people from the community and conduct research in the local language—but if your intervention isn’t actually helping those people, then none of that work is worth it.”
As a result, she points to the need for organizations to offer both empathetic and dignifying aid. “Empathetic aid involves approaching issues through a lens of compassion, but that can easily totter into sensationalism,” she describes. “That’s where dignifying aid comes in. We must let communities tell us what they want, rather than telling them what we think they want.”
Lola Flomen '15 presents to grade 11 and Pre-U students on COVID-19 and the African Continent: Understanding Politics of Disease
As early as her secondary school years at LCC, Lola was already a voice for positive global change. In 2013, she won the ninth annual Me to We Youth Action Award, and in 2014 she was the youngest speaker at TedxYouth Montreal, as well as the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Youth Medal.
Reflecting on those opportunities, she praises LCC for providing an environment that allowed her curiosity to roam. “LCC did a wonderful job teaching from a textbook and taking those concepts into real life beyond the classroom walls,” she remembers. She recalls learning about reproductive health in grade 8, an experience that sparked her inspiration to raise awareness about women’s unique health needs in the public health domain.
Going forward, Lola plans to continue her research on how infectious diseases impact women of reproductive age. “These are questions that many male researchers don’t consider, but they are questions that carry a lot of weight, especially in communities around the world where family planning programs aren’t as readily available,” she says.
Lola is eager to see global public health efforts become a two-way street. “I want to be able to call my colleagues on the Ivory Coast and ask them to help me with a problem I have in Canada,” she affirms. “Every time we engage in mutual respect and learning across countries and cultures, that day comes one step closer.”
Scientific Triumphs for Tony de Fougerolles ’82
BY DANA KOBERNICK, LCC Communications Manager
Few people can claim that their life’s work has had a significant impact on close to a billion people. Tony de Fougerolles ’82 is one such person, having been instrumental in developing the mRNA technology that is the basis for two of the COVID-19 vaccines being administered throughout the world.
With a PhD in immunology from Harvard University and a postdoctoral degree from Cambridge University, Tony has spent the past 20 years dedicated to scientific and medical advancement through his work in biotech research and development. For the past four years, he has served as the CEO at Evox Therapeutics, based in the UK, which is currently developing a novel class of biotherapeutics to treat life-threatening rare diseases.
The scientific discoveries have been numerous, but his contributions as the former founding Chief Scientific Officer at Moderna are noteworthy given our current reality.
The seemingly overnight success of the mRNA vaccine was actually a decade in the making. “Who would have thought 10 years ago that nearly a billion people would be taking an mRNA vaccine in the midst of a pandemic?,” Tony says. “While we didn’t know when or how, we knew mRNA vaccines could be transformative, especially in a rapidly-evolving pandemic setting.”
Tony and his father Robert de Fougerolles ’57 at the London Alumni Reunion in 2018
Not surprisingly, Tony feels that having a hand in creating this revolutionary technology is one of his greatest accomplishments. He and his team even laid out the groundwork for how to use it in a pandemic context and, back in 2012, spoke with Anthony Fauci’s group — the NIAID — to pitch it as part of a pandemic preparedness platform. He also applied for and received the first US government grants to further explore this area.
Another crowning achievement for Tony is his family. He takes great pride in having nurtured and raised two college-bound children with his wife, Paula.
While Tony enjoyed the sciences at LCC, noting that the course work was stimulating and challenging, he says that learning how to think critically and problem-solve proved to be more important. But the most valuable skill he acquired at LCC was writing compelling essays. “It’s not enough to have a good idea,” he says. “How you communicate that idea, for example to your boss or funding agencies, is critical.”
Tony also recognizes the profound impact that exceptional teachers can have on a student’s growth and development and, from his own experience, recalls how his history teacher, Denys Heward ’64, was a valuable mentor.
Although Tony has met with great success, he says that his journey has not been without its obstacles. “It is always challenging and exciting to be at the cutting-edge of science, but experiments and projects don’t always work out. Ultimately, the goal is to learn from those mistakes and forge ahead.”
