From podium to purpose: 50 years of valedictorians

Louis Hugo Francescutti is an emergency physician, author, university professor, safety and injury-prevention advocate and motivational speaker. He is the former president of both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Canadian Medical Association, and was appointed an honorary colonel by the Canadian Armed Forces. As of December 2023, he is also a Member of the Order of Canada.

“I count myself blessed with the opportunities that I’ve had and my position in life,” says Francescutti, who graduated from the Department of Biology. “I’m about to be 71 in December, but I don’t feel it.”

Though many of his colleagues have long retired, Francescutti remains driven. One of his recent projects is an AI chatbot designed in collaboration with students from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. The initiative is expected to help emergency-room patients experiencing homelessness by quickly connecting them with available beds and transportation.

Francescutti is also part of a team of parents working to create safe, inclusive living environments for disabled people who require full-time care, like his daughter, Laura.

“Laura is not going to be able to fend for herself when my wife and I are gone,” he says. “I want to create an environment where she — and others like her — can have top-quality support.”

Francescutti underscores that effective collaboration has been the key to success.

“I learned a long time ago at Concordia that it’s best to surround yourself with people who are far smarter than you. Keep learning from them, but more importantly, ensure that an idea can continue by creating a sense of ownership in others, even if it originated with you,” he says.

“You don’t realize the opportunities before you in your early stages of career training, but later, you see they were the building blocks.”

Marika Giles Samson, BA 96

I joke that I got my degree in debating and student government,” says Marika Giles Samson, a past president of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) who now serves as director of the Court Challenges Program (CCP), an organization that provides financial support so that Canadians can bring important test cases to court. These cases aim to define and defend constitutional and quasi-constitutional rights, particularly official language rights and human rights, on a national level.

In addition to her involvement in the CSU, Samson was debating in national and international competitions while pursuing her communication studies degree. At the end of a busy four years, she discovered she was short a credit, so she decided to pursue a sociology minor.

“I think it was quite transformative for me, not just because of the subject matter,” she says. “I don’t think my later academic path would have been possible otherwise.”

By focusing on her coursework and “learning how to be an actual student,” Samson found her calling. Though she had often felt pigeonholed when others suggested a career in law, friends convinced her to give it a try. Improved grades and academic strategies allowed her to complete her law degree at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.

“It was a lightbulb moment, I just found my thing,” says Samson. “We talk about one’s discipline shaping the way you see the world. For me, law channelled my energies and my thinking.”

After a few years as a litigator, Samson went on to get a master’s and a doctorate in law. She has since made a career out of a commitment to human rights and the rule of law. Highlights include teaching advocacy and human rights at McGill University’s Faculty of Law and a stint as interim executive director of the faculty’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP).

She has also been an active mentor, supporting law students at the CHRLP’s International Human Rights Internship Program and hiring law students to work at the CCP. Samson’s own mentors include Brian Counihan, a former dean of Students at Concordia, who taught her to make space for others to flourish.

“Mentorship isn’t about instruction,” she remarks. “It’s about creating space for people to feel included and capable, and helping them find their place.

“Everybody should have the opportunity to learn and grow.”

Sue-Anne Fox, BComm 01

Unlike Samson, Sue-Anne Fox always knew she wanted to be a lawyer.

After graduating high school, she spent a year as a page in the House of Commons while studying at the University of Ottawa before transferring to Concordia’s John Molson School of Business.

“Concordia attracted me because of its emphasis on the practical,” she says.

Graduating at the top of her class, Fox moved directly into law school. She credits her undergraduate degree in marketing and international business with providing a significant advantage in her legal career.

Today, Fox serves as managing counsel at TD Bank Financial Group. Having a foundation in business has been invaluable to her professional journey.

“It helped me develop trust with my business counterparts,” she notes. “It isn’t just, ‘I’m a lawyer providing legal advice,’ but ‘I’m a lawyer who understands what you’re trying to do and I’m capable of working with you to help you achieve your objective.’”

Fox adds that developing practical, business-oriented solutions involves nurturing positive relationships not just with her clients, but with colleagues as well.

“Putting theory into practice, when the bank launched an electronic alert functionality, I was the legal lead for the project,” she explains. “I was able to leverage my relationships with peers to deliver cross-disciplinary consolidated feedback.”

Time-management and collaboration skills acquired through group work and case competitions at Concordia have also been critical for Fox since she delivered her valedictory address.

“When I think back to my undergrad experience, there was a lot of learning how to get people to work together as a team,” she recalls. “When you graduate and enter the workforce, you realize the practical application of the skills you’ve developed and had the chance to test out while in an educational environment.

“We didn’t just learn about these soft skills at Concordia, we developed them and learned how to apply them.”

Keroles Riad, BEng 13, MSc 16, PhD 21

If you’ve ever used a compost bin on campus at Concordia, then you have Keroles Riad to thank.

Riad was an undergraduate at the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science when he started Waste Not, Want Not (WNWN), an initiative that decreased overall annual waste for each Concordian by 16 per cent and supported the university’s sustainability goals.

“WNWN started as a passion project and had very little to do with my degree or research,” he explains.

“But I’ve realized this kind of initiative requires you to be methodical and systematic, which is where my engineering mindset came in. It was also a great opportunity to manage a team and lead projects.”

Riad has since transformed his passion into a company called enuf, a certified B-Corp he founded to continue tackling the waste crisis. As CEO, he leads a team in providing waste audits, composting services and “green brigades” that help attendees sort their waste at events.

This focus on sustainability also informs his ongoing research in 3D printing. As a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University in Ottawa, Riad recently co-authored a paper with Paula Wood-Adams, former Concordia professor, researcher and dean of Graduate Studies, about the use of nanotechnology in improving the sustainability of 3D-printed materials.

“Paula facilitated a visit to Axis Protoype, a printing company in Montreal, where I learned that the photocurable resins used in 3D printing are sensitive to sunlight — one of the biggest problems facing the industry,” Riad explains. “That became my research project.”

Lasers used in 3D printing use the same type of ultraviolet (UV) light as the sun. When UV-printed parts are exposed to sunlight, the materials continue to cure, often breaking apart within a couple of weeks. Riad’s recent paper with Wood-Adams is the culmination of a decade of study towards creating a stable resin to addresses this problem.

“We thought we’d do it in six months, but it took us 10 years instead,” he says with a laugh.

“It’s been interesting to learn how persistent you have to be to accomplish your research goal. Experimentalists are stubborn by training — we have to try, fail, learn and adjust, then try over and over again.”

Desirée de Jesus, PhD 20

Desirée de Jesus has been a researcher since childhood, exploring and reimagining stories from television and movies.

“When I was young, I’d go to the library and look up all the books I could find on whatever I had just watched,” she recalls. “Then I’d create a little file with notes about recasting, how the story should have gone, or what it would be like as a video game.”

De Jesus describes this early curiosity as “critical fabulation” — an approach she stills uses today as an assistant professor of communication and media studies at York University. Her work explores the intersections of race, gender, aesthetics and technology through research-creation methods like video essays and experimental video art.

The former Concordia Public Scholar and valedictorian’s experience at Concordia’s Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) — Canada’s largest and most established games research centre — was pivotal. A game jam at TAG exposed de Jesus to alternative research methods like play, deformation and creation, boosting her confidence in her experimental research and dissemination methods.

Her work has largely centred on Black girlhoods, including a recent animation project that reconstructs surveillance videos of police brutality against young Black girls. Rooted in community engagement, her collaborative research projects ensure participants have input and approval in the process.

That ethical approach to her research, guided by responsibility and accountability, was modelled by Concordia professor Danielle Bobker and associate professor Gada Mahrouse with their Feminism and Controversial Humour working group.

“I’ve been in discussion with other scholars who work on Black girlhoods about how to uphold my responsibility to these girls, to their images and consent,” explains de Jesus.

“Seeing Danielle and Gada deal with some of the tensions and ethics of undertaking certain kinds of research was really formative. Having people that can help me think through these questions today has been very useful.”

She adds that her involvement in the Concordia President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism was also instrumental in shaping her growth as both a researcher and a citizen.

“I’m grateful to have been a part of Concordia’s measures to make amends and gesture towards a new relationship with Black communities, to own up to what’s been a fraught dynamic. I see myself as part of a longer trajectory of Black students at Concordia who are committed to making a difference.

“I think these efforts are worth recognizing as an important part of what we are celebrating.”