From saving kids with brain tumours to sashaying the hate away, Future 40 winners make mark on Manitoba

CBC Manitoba is announcing its top 10 Future 40 under 40 finalists — a list of impressive, community-minded Manitobans giving back to make the province better for future generations.

They’re making their marks in a variety of ways.

An Iranian immigrant is helping marginalized Manitoba communities through science, physicians are making waves in emergency medicine and pediatric neurosurgery, a former women’s collegiate hockey player is a future lawyer raising awareness about reconciliation, and a non-binary Vietnamese-Canadian drag performer is pushing 2SLGBTQ+ pride and sashaying the hate away.

Alex Nguyen

When Alex Nguyen — stage name Ruby Chopstix — sashays into a room, it’s hard to miss their big hair, flashy earrings, shiny nails and overall snatched looks that sometimes call back to their cultural roots.

One such outfit is a royalty version of an áo dài, a flowy Vietnamese long dress with rainbow-coloured flourishes on the sleeves and patterns of a phoenix rising from the ashes — a symbol of their evolution over the past six years into one of Winnipeg’s fiercest Gen Z drag performers.

Nguyen credits the late, great Winnipeg drag performer Joan Costalotsa, who told them they were capable of doing drag, for part of their drag origins.

The suggestion set Nguyen down a path of experimentation. 

They took a drag workshop at Prairie Theatre Exchange and honed their skills, culminating in the creation of their alter ego, Ruby Chopstix, in 2018.

Since then they’ve used their platform to advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ rights and greater representation for Black, Indigenous and other people of colour through their annual Velvet Rope, which showcases BIPOC drag performers.

They won the FascinAsian Film Festival 2021 youth award for their film exploring queer Asian identity as a young adult.

WATCH | Getting to know Alex Nguyen: 

Nguyen participates in drag storytime events and is hot off the heels of performances during recent Pride festivities.

They were also recently named Rainbow Resource Centre’s first drag performer in residence, representing the 2SLGBTQ+ centre at different events.  

Nguyen also feels emboldened to step into the light amid a rise in anti-2SLGBTQ+ hate around the world.

“There are moments where I do kind of get nervous and scared of, like, just being so, so out there,” they said. “But I just really want other people to feel happy.”

Nguyen’s path of self-discovery as a queer person wasn’t linear — they first came out as bisexual, then gay, then non-binary. There’s something in that dynamic that they want young queer people to bear in mind when searching for a sense of belonging.

“You don’t have to figure everything out right away: you can change, you can adapt,” they said.

“Other people may tell you to hurry it up, but you don’t have to listen…. Trust yourself, believe in who you are.”

Dr. Annie Drapeau

Dr. Annie Drapeau is a Francophone transplant from the East Coast who brought her expertise as a pediatric neurosurgeon to Manitoba a couple of years ago and is helping make an otherwise daunting experience for kids and families a little more bearable.

Drapeau, originally from New Brunswick, is an expert in craniofacial disorders in children who helped introduce minimally invasive head and facial surgeries at Health Sciences Centre’s Children’s Hospital. Not only do the specialized procedures leave less scarring, they also reduce complications.

“You go from a one-week stay in the hospital to a one-day stay in the hospital. It just provides such a different experience to the patients and the families,” said Drapeau, who also specializes in neurological disorders such as hydrocephalus, a neurological disorder stemming from the buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, and treatment for pediatric brain tumors.

Drapeau was an assistant professor at Ohio State University and finished a pediatric neurosurgery fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, before being recruited to Manitoba.

She’s the only woman neurosurgeon in Canada certified through the American Board of Pediatric Neurosurgery, and until recently, she was the only woman neurosurgeon working in Manitoba.

WATCH | Getting to know Dr. Annie Drapeau:

As someone who trains neurosurgery residents at the U of M, Drapeau’s research focuses on quality assurance and ensuring future surgeons realize their impact extends far beyond the operating table.

“When you think about how can I do better? How can I avoid mistakes? … and you try to figure out what are the barriers to improving care … you have a high stake in it,” said Drapeau, who is also co-chair of the quality improvement committee with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons. 

“I think when you put care, like actual care, or families and patients in the middle and you go, what’s important to them, and how can I make that better? Then we’re moving things in the right direction.”

Tréchelle Bunn

Tréchelle Bunn, 24, demonstrated a sense of determination on the ice at an early age, honing her stickhandling skills on her backyard rink. 

Bunn is a proud member of Birdtail Sioux Dakota Nation and grew up in Wampum in southeastern Manitoba. Her family commuted across the border daily so she could attend a highly regarded high school hockey program in Warroad, Minn.

She went on to play for the University of Calgary Dinos and University of Manitoba Bisons women’s hockey teams.

“Being an athlete growing up, the idea of movement as medicine and staying balanced physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually — so kind of on those four quadrants of the medicine wheel — has always been something that really spoke to me,” she said.

Bunn started the annual Reconciliation Run half-marathon, which starts at the Birtle Residential School and ends at Birdtail Sioux Dakota Nation. 

It started as a healing walk in July 2021, sparked by the discovery of around 200 possible burials at a former Kamloops, B.C, residential school, as well as the Cancel Canada Day movement, she said.

It was also in honour of her family members, including her grandfather, who attended Birtle Residential School.

“Something that my grandfather told me when I was younger was that when he was at the Birtle Residential School, he wanted nothing more than to just run away,” she said. “That’s always stuck with me.”

WATCH | Getting to know Tréchelle Bunn:

In 2023, she partnered with Under Armour to give over 200 pairs of shoes to youth in Birdtail, and was also elected one of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s youth chiefs.

Now enrolled in law at the U of M, Bunn aspires to continue making a difference in the courtroom.

“My father, who’s a First Nations RCMP officer, kind of always stressed to me the importance of having representation … even within systems that are very much traditionally not meant for First Nations people to occupy,” she said. “Law was kind of that way to get involved in that system and try to be a change.”

She also aspires to one day run for chief of her community.

Timi Ojo

Timi Ojo never imagined he’d warm up to Manitoba’s frigid winters and mosquito-filled summers, but when an opportunity to study in the province opened, he decided to take it, as he was pursuing a career as a soil moisture and weather scientist.

Ojo immigrated from Nigeria to Winnipeg in 2009 to do his master’s degree at the University of Manitoba. He had his sights set on Australia for his PhD, but his supervisor at the U of M, senior scholar and agrometeorologist Paul Bullock, persuaded him to stay.

“I definitely don’t regret a day of it,” Ojo said.

“Part of my work also takes me to so many rural communities. I’ve been to a lot of them and it’s just the kindness: Everywhere you turn, you see people willing to give a helping hand.”

Ojo did his PhD at U of M in collaboration with NASA, which launched a satellite as part of its soil moisture active and passive mapping project to take soil moisture data from around the globe.

Ojo created the first automated soil moisture monitoring network in the province for his postgraduate studies, and data from it helped flood forecasters during the flood of 2011 along the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

WATCH | Getting to know Timi Ojo:

After the flood, a recommendation was made to increase the number of soil moisture monitoring stations. Ojo’s efforts and expertise helped Manitoba almost double the number of stations in the province.

They’ve proven increasingly more important for predicting impacts of floods and droughts on Manitoba agriculture as rain and snowstorms get more intense and unpredictable, Ojo said.

Ojo has worked for the province as an agrometeorologist since 2015 and is also an adjunct professor at the U of M and acting manager of crop production.

He also leads a project across the Prairies that pools data from 500 weather stations to watch for crop disease risk.

The father of two also recently became a self-published author of the children’s book Jo’s Super Skates, based on his daughter’s experiences skating at The Forks.

Lucy Fowler

Lucy Fowler is working at the intersection of Indigenous and queer identity to make the university experience and broader community more inclusive.

Fowler is a Métis two-spirit woman who chairs the Manitoba Métis Federation’s Two-Spirit Michif Local and a faculty member at the University of Manitoba, where she is leading a project to help the institution better support Indigiqueer and other Indigenous people.

“We need to be making more expansive spaces … where people can express who they are, however they are, and come to that space and be welcomed,” Fowler said of her work at the university. 

WATCH | Getting to know Lucy Fowler: 

Fowler is helping to develop a U of M Indigenous education post-doctoral program, co-founded the Pawaatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers academic journal, and is co-hosting a Métis studies symposium this fall with over 300 scholars expected to attend.

She has also been part of the Mamawi Project, in which she and others have hosted gatherings for Métis people.

Fowler, a mother of a two-year-old, said she didn’t get involved in the broader Métis community until she was an adult.

“I would probably blame internalized racism for that,” she said. “That was really important to me that I am building those spaces for others coming up.”

Her main advice to people struggling to figure out where they fit in?

“Find your people and lean into that safe space, because there are people who really want you to thrive and be happy and be able to be all of who you are,” she said. “They’re waiting for you to come find them.”

Dr. Kristjan Thompson

Dr. Kristjan Thompson, 38, is an emergency medicine specialist who frequently spoke up on behalf of his burnt-out colleagues at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling for more resources for front-line staff and warning of the risks an overburdened system created for patient welfare.

The St. Boniface Hospital ER doctor did that from his post as president and chair of Doctors Manitoba, then the youngest head of the physician advocacy organization in its 115-year history. 

In 2022, Thompson shared publicly that the growing exodus of health-care staff from the system and struggles to meet high patient care standards had for the first time made him consider quitting.

“In the ER, you see the whole spectrum of the human condition. You see people in their highest of highs and lowest of lows. And there’s a certain privilege to be able to engage with that, to experience that, to have a role in maybe helping alleviating suffering,” Thompson said.

“We’re seeing the highest [burnout] rates that we’ve ever seen, and I think, you know, what’s the point of having such a platform and not using it to advocate for your colleagues?”

WATCH | Getting to know Dr. Kristjan Thompson:

On top of practising as an ER doctor at St. Boniface Hospital, Thompson previously served as business manager of the facility and is now its chief medical officer.

His expansive list of work experience includes being on the Winnipeg Jets medical staff and serving as an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine. He’s a former transport physician with STARS air ambulance.

Thompson’s commitment to providing quality care has also earned him recognition from his peers outside of Manitoba. The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians gave Thompson the Canadian Physician of the Year award in 2022.

“I would be nothing without all the fantastic nurses I work with, health-care aides, allied health professionals,” Thompson said. “Especially in the ER, it is very much a team approach.”

Christina McKay 

Christina McKay is drawing on her experience to help Manitobans in the care of Child and Family Services who face a drop in support when they age out of care in young adulthood, as she did.

McKay, 35, was born in rural Manitoba and was apprehended by CFS early in life.

McKay credits educators at Killarney School for guiding her toward higher education to hone her creative skills.

She started off at the University of Manitoba thinking she wanted to be an animator but graduated with a bachelor of fine arts specializing in ceramics and art history. 

Then she got into Mentoring Artists for Women’s art program and started to explore the “institutionalization of my childhood growing up in care,” McKay said.

While completing a novel-length autobiographical piece of narrative poetry exploring her experience, McKay realized she didn’t “just want to talk about the trauma of things; I think I want to be an agent for change.”

WATCH | Getting to know Christina McKay:

“What really kept coming back was what happened after I aged out and just that isolation, the inconsistency of support, having to build roots at 21, and I just remember the weight of that sitting with me,” she said.

“If I can do anything that makes someone feel like they’re not alone when that happens to them … I think that became my driving force.”

She got involved as a youth outreach worker with Voices: Manitoba’s Youth in Care Network as the group was researching how to build a more robust safety net for youth. McKay was involved in workshops where young people who were in care learn life and advocacy skills when they age out.

That led her to Futures Forward, which helps reduce barriers faced by young people leaving the care of Child and Family Services. She manages the tuition waiver program, which helps set young adults up with financial support and mentorship so they can pursue post-secondary schooling.

McKay is now setting her sights on law school, with a focus on the intersection of legislation, policy and governance as they relate to the child and family system.

“You can’t sit at a table and change a system if you don’t understand how a system works on all ends,” she said.

Karen Gallagher

Karen Gallagher, 35, has worked for University College of the North for nearly a decade and is currently the school’s human resources administrator. 

Tending to tasks and fires in that role would be enough to keep most people busy, but somehow Gallagher also fights literal blazes in her spare time and helps folks in The Pas in need of health-care supports.

“When people tell me that I can’t do something, I like to prove them wrong, which is where a lot of my volunteerism comes from,” said Gallagher, a mother of three and volunteer firefighter in The Pas.

She offers up her administrative skills on a volunteer basis to The Pas Handi-Van, which shuttles people with disabilities around to appointments.

Gallagher has also volunteered for the local 4H Helping Hands, The Pas Guest List, The Pas Travel Club, the local Health Involvement Group and community cleanup initiatives.

WATCH | Getting to know Karen Gallagher:

She’s also vice-president of The Pas Health Complex Foundation, which helps raise money and get equipment and services for local patients who aren’t always fully covered through government health agencies, Gallagher said.

She’s always been drawn to jobs where she can get her hands dirty, often in male-dominated fields such as landscaping and trucking. 

When she signed up for the fire department, Gallagher emphasized to the chief that she was there to be on the front lines.

“I told him, if you put me in the girl box, I’m out,” she said. “If you have me at [the station during] a big structure fire doing everybody’s dishes and making chili so everybody can eat … there’s someone else for that, and it won’t be me.”

The spirit of volunteerism is something that, like wildfires, can spread under the right conditions, Gallagher said.

“Time is a finite thing and we make the time or we don’t,” she said. “When other people see you getting out there and helping within your community, it’s often a bit contagious.… They’re more likely to step up.”

Payam Peymani

Payam Peymani, 38, is using his drug safety expertise to help prevent adverse events and medication errors that impact vulnerable or underserved Manitoba communities.

Peymani immigrated to the province in 2021 after time in Switzerland and Holland, though he’s originally from Iran.

After graduating as a pharmacist back home, he completed a doctorate in pharmacoepidemiology and now uses big data sets to investigate benefits and risks of different medications at the population level.

He’s part of a pan-Canadian study investigating anti-seizure medication safety from data from over 270,000 pregnant people and children.

Peymani has volunteered with Newcomers Employment & Education Development Services (NEEDS) by teaching English to Ukrainian newcomer children and helping to translate health-care information.

WATCH | Getting to know Payam Peymani:

He also got involved with the 2SLGBTQ+ community. 

“I came from [a] country that most of the things about LGBT is banned. I know many people from my home country or Asia or the Middle East that belong to LGBT [communities], but they are not comfortable there,” Peymani said. “So I started the work that I really enjoyed.”

Peymani is a bylaw and policy co-ordinator for Pride Winnipeg, where he advocates for inclusivity initiatives and supports 2LSBGTQ+ folks who immigrated to Winnipeg from the Middle East, he said.

He also launched a research division at Pride Winnipeg to study health issues and population dynamics in the queer community related to medication safety, poverty rates, care gaps in rural Manitoba and other challenges related to equity and equality. 

Peymani said many of these efforts are fuelled by the gratitude he has for the “warm people here” who supported his family’s transition to Winnipeg.

“Canada is extremely welcoming to newcomers and immigrants, so as an immigrant, it is my responsibility to build a bridge between Canadian community, Manitoba community and newcomers and immigrants to understand each other better, help each other improve the safety [and] improve the health care.” 

Matt Bell

Entrepreneur and father Matt Bell, 35, has spent the past decade making each moment count.

During his 20s, he started his landscaping business, Geller’s Design. He got married. He was also diagnosed with cancer.

Various treatments for his skin cancer failed. His condition worsened to late-stage malignant melanoma.

“Nothing was working and I was … miserable and pissed off and wondering why the hell am I even trying anymore,” he said.

His outlook changed in a moment eight years ago. Bell was at a clinic seated next to a girl wearing her soccer jersey while the pair were hooked up to immunotherapy treatments at the same time.

“She was celebrating her fourth birthday with her soccer team and they spent all afternoon visiting her, and she had been going on 18 months of treatment for leukemia,” he said. “Who am I to sit there, having lived five of her lifetimes and lived an amazing life, to feel sorry for myself?” 

WATCH | Getting to know Matt Bell:

Due in part to his condition and the medication he was on to keep the cancer at bay, Bell and his wife, Madison, were told they’d never conceive. Then their “miracle child,” Ben, was born three years ago.

Thirteen years since founding the business, Geller’s Design has grown to a staff of 75. It’s now the largest residential-focused landscaping firm in the province, Bell said.

“I was going to create a workplace that was year-round that people could view as a final destination and really raise a family, start a life while working in the landscape industry,” he said. “I’m really proud of the team we’ve built and the culture that we have.”

Bell has teamed up with the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation to help raise funds for cancer research and to spread awareness about what steps people can take to protect themselves from skin cancer.

“I wouldn’t wish cancer on anybody, but I wish that the perspective you gain from understanding your own mortality is something that more people understood,” Bell said. “The world would be kinder.”