Alumni in the Pit 2018

Brandon Nolan: providing opportunities for First Nations youth through hockey. 

Brandon Nolan graduated from the Business Administration – Marketing program in 2013 after a career ending injury limited his time as a professional hockey player. He is currently busy running successful businesses with his father and brother including 3N Clothing Apparel and the 3|NOLANS First Nation Hockey School, as well as the Ted Nolan Foundation.

A proud Ojibway from the Garden River First Nation in northern Ontario, Brandon grew up spending the winter months playing hockey on an outdoor rink, beginning his love for the game and eventually earning him a spot with the pros.

His career began playing with the Oshawa Generals, where he became a two-time OHL All-Star and a consistent top scorer in his three years playing for the team. It was that strong performance with the Oshawa Generals that led to being drafted by the New Jersey Devils in the third round of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft and then again in the fourth round of the 2003 NHL Entry Draft by the Vancouver Canucks. What followed was a five-year professional hockey career all over the world, which ended after suffering a serious concussion playing for the Carolina Hurricanes.

After earning his diploma, Brandon used his experience to provide opportunities for First Nations youth, affecting the lives of over 1,000 First Nations youth through hockey since the school opened in 2013. Brandon, along with his father and brother, look forward to being positive role models for First Nations people for years to come.

Manjula Selvarajah: telling Toronto’s stories.

Manjula Selvarajah is a Toronto-based freelance journalist, occasional on-air technology columnist and producer for CBC Radio, including the very-popular radio show Metro Morning. She is also a 2014 graduate of DC’s Journalism – Print and Broadcast program (now known as Journalism – Mass Media).

During her time at Metro Morning, she has interviewed a range of interesting people in the city and has produced segments with politicians like Mayor John Tory and entrepreneur Jim Balsillie.

Manjula also recently guest hosted CBC Radio’s Toronto music show, Big City Small World, which showcases the city’s music talent and presented a column called Live and Learn on CBC’s Fresh Air, where she profiled people dipping their toes into new experiences. She also co-hosted one of the few English shows on Canadian Tamil television, Crossroads on Tamil Vision International.

Prior to earning her diploma, Manjula was vice-president of Marketing and the thirteenth employee hired at Toronto start-up software firm Eloqua. There she managed a team of nine marketers and inside sales reps to design and execute creative marketing campaigns, to build a quantifiable sales funnel for Eloqua’s growing North American sales team.

In addition to her work, Manjula has volunteered extensively with the Canadian Tamil Youth Development Centre, the Canadian Tamil Congress, and for fundraisers in support of the Tamil Studies Conference and charities in the north and east of Sri Lanka. She is also co-founder of the volunteer-run organization Tamil Women Rising. She loves reading, talking and tweeting about current affairs, books, Toronto, the Tamil diaspora, and entrepreneurship, at the Twitter handle @manjaselva.

Alumni in the Pit 2017

John Hotts: branding a new generation.

John Hotts graduated from the Advertising and Marketing Communications program at Durham College in 2008. He currently works as associate creative director at OneMethod, a Toronto-based design and ad shop, that identifies as a “creative crew that is most definitely digital”.

As a kid, Hotts doodled the NIKE and Adidas logos all over his school books, and his passion for branding has since landed him a successful career in marketing and advertising. He has worked with clients such as Delissio, Haagen-Dazs, Coors Light, World Wildlife Fund, Smarties and Sweet Jesus. His campaign for Kit Kat Canada was hailed as their most successful promotion ever, and his design for the Canadian Football League’s (CFL) new logo in 2015 amplified the organization’s efforts to re-introduce the CFL to a new generation of fans.

Hotts’ work has been recognized with many different awards from organizations including Applied Arts, Canadian Marketing Awards, AToMiC Awards, and the Globe and Mail Young Lions competition. In addition, a campaign he worked on with Union Hearing Aid Centre made the Cannes shortlist. In 2016, Hotts was listed as one of Marketing Magazine’s 30 under 30.  

Brent Lessard: Travelling at the speed of sound.

Brent Lessard graduated top of his class from Durham College’s Mechanical Engineering Technology program in 2014. He now works as technical co-ordinator for International Leak Detection (ILD) as well as a project manager for rLoop, an online think tank and talent resource company, which he co-founded.

rLoop is comprised of a team of more than 140 people from 14 different countries who are working to revolutionize the future of transportation. Through open-source and collaborative design, a prototype is being developed for a pod that can travel at hyper speeds, enabling people to get where they need to go, faster – much, much faster!

At ILD, Lessard designs and implements new intelligent building monitoring systems, combining innovative sensor technology with high-performance cloud solutions to produce secure and reliable information on a building’s integrity. He is also involved with developing improvements to technical testing equipment and creating new testing procedures and services.