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Alumni profiles
NEVIN FRENCH
Being able to adapt, lead, research and present clear and concise briefs, has given Nevin French an edge in government and information technology roles
NEVIN FRENCH, BA’00, is a career public servant who’s enjoyed transitioning from policy analyst to working on the Russia file with Global Affairs Canada, to today being Vice President Public Policy, Information Technology Association of Canada, an association bridging the tech world and government.
French understands how government works and how quickly technology evolves. Calling it a “plug and play background,” French says his liberal arts education gave him a broad understanding that he applies to many facets of his work. “One of the most fascinating things about tech is no one knows where it’s going…[the industry] needs critical thinkers and people with strong analytical skills.” He also holds a Master of European and Russian Studies.
He’s moved across the country a few times as a public servant, between Ottawa with the Federal Government and the Government of Alberta in Edmonton. He’s been a policy analyst with both Natural Resources Canada and Public Safety Canada, Manager of the Canadian Energy Strategy Secretariat, Deputy Director for European Commercial Affairs, Senior Desk Officer for Russia with Global Affairs Canada, and Senior Analyst with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The list goes on, as does his excitement for the work. “I have always just wanted to do work that interests me,” he says.
French is an unabashed supporter of the liberal arts education he got at King’s and never passes up a chance to mention how it has shaped him.
“Government doesn’t do well creating policy on the fly. Technology is changing so quickly you have to be careful setting policy to respond to the crisis of the day. That technology may not be relevant in five years. We ask governments to aim for a more principles-based approach.”
It’s the kind of thoughtful work that those who study liberal arts are uniquely qualified for, French says.
“When you think about issues of privacy, there is going to be such a need for people with a strong background in subjects like ethics. Someone with a Contemporary Studies Program (CSP) background, or a background in Classics—they are going to have a good approach to how we will need to think about evolving principles of privacy in the future. There are lots of people who can handle the bells and whistles of the new technologies but being able to understand what modern privacy means is going to be very important for tech companies to understand.”
ANDREW LAING
Andrew Laing, whose media measurement company Cormex Research was acquired by US-based Reputation Institute in 2019, says critical thinking set him apart
ANDREW LAING, BA(Hons)’86, was as excited that his daughter started at King’s this year as he was about selling his media research company to an industry leader.
“The only vacation time I took this year was at the very end of August. I fixed up a 1991 Jeep YJ, and my daughter and I drove to King’s,” he said. “I took her to start her first year. So, definitely put that in the story.” It was the pause that refreshed after a whirlwind spring and summer at work. In May, US-based data and analytics insight company Reputation Institute an nounced that it had bought Laing’s Toronto-based firm Cormex Research. Founded in 1989, Cormex Research has developed customized social media and traditional me dia measurement and analysis solutions that have helped shape communications strat egies and tactics for hundreds of organizations. Present and past clients include Bank of Montreal, Sunlife Financial, University of Toronto, Rogers Communications, KPMG Canada and several Canadian government departments.
“Cormex Research has a great track record of success in the areas of media
research and analysis. They don’t rely solely on automated tools and they have expe rience and wisdom to add to the analysis, which differentiates them in terms of quality and service,” Kylie Wright-Ford, CEO of Reputation Institute said in a press release at that time. “Global companies of all sizes and across a broad range of industries have come to depend on Cormex Research for their insights on how media coverage and media trends can impact an organization’s reputation.”
Now, as Reputation Institute’s SVP of Media RepTrak, Americas, Laing is respon sible for product development and introducing solutions to companies throughout the Americas. At the same time, Cormex’s research analysts continue to work out of the Toronto office supporting existing accounts. Laing said they’re excited to join Reputation Institute because of the opportunity to give clients a better way to measure how, when and where media content can influence public opinion about their company’s repu tation.
Cormex successfully grew over the past three decades because the people in the company are skilled and hard-working, Laing says. And he attributes some of his personal success to his time at King’s.
“One of the things that King’s does not get recognized for is how successful they have been in developing leaders in business,” he said, pointing also to many of his former classmates, who he said have risen to senior levels in the business world.
UNDERSTANDING HOW THE WORLD WORKS For Laing, it’s the ability to think critically rather than relying on more traditional technical skills that has set him apart from his peers and helped him succeed. This is something he directly attributes to his edu cation at King’s.
“Starting to understand how the world works, how issues affect how people decide things, how policies are created, all of that starts with the understanding that comes from a liberal arts background,” he said when interviewed for www.ukingscommuni ty.ca.
Laing’s formal education continued through a master’s degree at Queens, an
MBA from Royal Roads University, and a PhD from York. But it’s his time at King’s that he identifies with the most. “ You find as you get older the fear of not having a job recedes, and the desire to be seen as a more knowledgeable and educated person increases. You want to increase your knowledge and awareness of the world. To deny yourself that opportunity in those first years of university life is a shame. When Laing graduated from King’s in 1986, the media landscape was drastically different from today. Since 1989, Cormex has collected media and data about prominent companies and organizations to help them manage their reputation. A lot has changed over that time. “I think the electronic stapler was an innovation in the late 1990s,” Laing joked. Media just used to be print, radio and television. Now it’s all of that at once and then some. Not only did Laing and his com pany navigate the unchartered waters, they pioneered the wa y. This is what attracted the U. S. Reputation Institute to the firm north of the border. T he acceleration of change means Laing, perhaps even more than most parents,
understands how different his child’s world is from the one he lived in when he was walking around King’s more than 30 years ago. But in that full-circle moment when he dropped his daughter off at King’s in Sep tember, he also noticed that the Quad looked in man y ways the same, and the feeling was one of coming home. “ Anybody should want to take a liberal arts education for the very simple fact that you want to be an educated person. You want to run with educated people. You want to be thought of as an educated person,” he said.
Andrew Laing and his daughter Kateryna drove from Toronto to King’s in September so she could begin the Foundation Year Program.
TEMMA FRECKER
Award-winning middle school teacher says trans-disciplinary learning allows students to make connections
TEMMA FRECKER, BA(Hons)’01, is pretty clear about her teaching philosophy: “Empowerment is foundational for me—giving the students the tools and the confidence to help them delve into whatever is important to them.”
It’s a philosophy and a teaching style that won Frecker the 2018 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Teaching. Frecker teaches middle school at a non-profit independent school called The Booker School in Port Williams, N.S. She brought her King’s experience to her new school, saying the wide variety of texts she read at King’s and the way she learned to make connections between things that she saw in day-to-day living, across subjects and interest areas, is the same approach The Booker School takes. “It’s called trans-disciplinary. Everything is taught through the idea of trying to get a deeper understanding of a big concept. You don’t separate your subjects. That’s what we did at King’s.”
After King’s, Frecker was an intern on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. She worked for NGOs across Canada and in Mexico and Honduras, and began her teaching career when in an isolated fly-in community in Nunavik.
“Education isn’t necessarily a huge priority there, so I had to make it relevant to develop trust and keep the students coming back.”
Relevancy is key to why Frecker won the national teaching award. She was completing a unit on Canada 150 at the time when there was an emotional debate going on in Halifax over what to do with the statue of Edward Cornwallis. He is called the founder
of Halifax, but for many Mi'kmaqi, his statue represents injustices and violence against Indigenous people. They wanted it removed. “I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know the best way forward, so I thought—I’ll just put it to the students.”
The students came up with an elegant solution to incorporate the statue with other statues, such as one of Chief John Denny Jr., the last of the Mi'kmaq hereditary grand, or Viola Desmond, a beacon in the fight for racial equality. The statues would face each other as if in conversation to bring a larger perspective to Halifax history. The media got hold of it and Frecker and the students were besieged by interview requests. All that led to the award. Frecker, with true humility, deflects any personal kudos. “It shows the education at Booker is a really legitimate and powerful educational experience.”
She also credits her students who tackled the assignment in a typically King’s-ian way, with positions and debate and discussion. As part of the assignment the students had to write reflections on what they had experienced. One grade 6 student wrote: “If you want change to happen, you have to try to make it happen.”
That’s what empowerment looks like.
LEZLIE LOWE
Freelance journalist, author and journalism instructor combines her education and natural curiosity to look more closely at things others merely see and accept
LIFE HAS BEEN A SERIES of epiphanies for Lezlie Lowe, BA(Hons)’96, MFA’16. There was the one she had while studying in the Contemporary Studies Program (CSP). “I found that I could study philosophy, but I didn’t have to think about or write about old stuff by white guys with white beards,” Lowe says. “I could write about things like the show I saw at the Beaux Arts in Montreal or the dichotomy of the virgin slut. I could take things from the present day that I was interested in and apply philosophical concepts to them and write about them in a really engaging, conversational way.”
Lowe didn’t realize it at the time but using her education to address contemporary issues she was curious about would become a cornerstone of the career that lay ahead. After graduating from King’s, Lowe worked as a fitness instructor and started writing record reviews for The Coast, “to keep in the habit of writing. That snowballed and I realized (epiphany number two) I liked journalism.”
The snowball grew as it rolled and Lowe found herself also freelancing for CBC Radio. She began teaching at King’s School of Journalism and writing an opinion column in the Chronicle Herald. Along the way she also started a family. One winter day she found herself on the Halifax Commons with a baby and a toddler who had to pee. Epiphany number three: public bathrooms are often inaccessible to many groups including the homeless, trans people, older people, and people with babies.
“I thought this is ridiculous. Not only is it ridiculous but nobody thinks about it and very few people talk about it. I love doing that in journalism—looking at things that we look at but don’t actually see.”
Lowe wrote a feature piece on public toilets for The Coast. There was more to come. “It became the itch I had to keep scratching. I kept coming back to it. Talking about bathrooms is talking about the human condition—who has access and who doesn’t. At the most basic level it’s the questions of how do we include everyone in a well-functioning society?”
Lowe kept researching and writing about bathrooms and took the idea for a book into King’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. In 2018 she published No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs.
Lowe is working on another book these days—this one is about women volunteers
during WWII. It’s due out in the fall of 2020.
“That’s what I do,” Lowe says. “I write about things I want to write about when I want to write about them.”
If you’d like to read more alumni profiles, please visit www.ukingscommunity.ca. While there, you can also nominate a fellow alumnus or yourself as a possible profile candidate.
