Alumni of Influence

Jim Williamson is a long-time contributor and producer behind some of Canada’s most well-known television programs. He began his career with CTV’s Canada AM program and, from there, moved to the CBC where he worked on The Journal, The National, and Disclosure. For several years he was an executive producer in documentary production, and has more recently worked in the current affairs division as executive producer of CBC’s The Fifth Estate, an award-winning investigative journalism show. In 2010, the Governor General presented the program with the Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism. In 2014, the show also won an Emmy Award for its documentary Made in Bangladesh. He has personally won nine Gemini and Canadian Screen Awards. Williamson is also a past member of the UC Career Mentorship Program, and has been a speaker at the college’s public lecture series. 

Diana Bennett is an artist, former teacher and arts administrator who has worked to establish the role of the arts in Ontario throughout her long and distinguished career. A former senior executive with TVOntario, she has sat on a number of corporate and volunteer boards, including the University of Toronto Art Centre (now the Art Museum), the Toronto Arts Foundation, Canada Publishing, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Granite Club. A member of the Ontario Society of Artists, she works in mixed media and sculpture and is represented by Walnut Contemporary gallery in Toronto.

Gerald Caplan has had a distinguished and varied career in politics and international development. A former associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at U of T, he served as director of development agency Cuso’s Canadian volunteer program in Nigeria. Caplan led the advocacy office for the City of Toronto’s public health department before becoming national director of the New Democratic Party of Canada. He is the author of The Dilemma of Canadian Socialism, The Betrayal of Africa and Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide. He speaks widely about African development issues and genocide and his writing has appeared in the Walrus, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail.

Anne Laurel Carter was born in Toronto in 1953 and left at seventeen to work on kibbutzim in Israel, a Jean Vanier home in France and in California. She earned a master’s of education specializing in second language acquisition and taught English as a Second Language in Toronto and in isolated Cree villages of northern Quebec, as well as French immersion in southern Ontario.

Carter currently resides in Toronto and Nova Scotia, writing, teaching and mentoring other writers. Her writing includes The Shepherd's Granddaughter and Under a Prairie Sky and has twice earned the Canadian Library Association's Best Book of the Year Award for Children, a prestigious Jane Addam’s Honor Award for peace, the Mr. Christie’s Best Picture Book Award and numerous nominations for children’s reading programs across the country.

The late Carl Cole was a businessman, publisher, philanthropist and founder of Coles Bookstore. He grew up in poverty on a farm outside Barrie, Ontario, and spent time in an orphanage in Detroit, Michigan. He came to Toronto as a teenager and graduated from UC with a commerce degree in 1936. In the thick of the Great Depression, he operated a book-selling pushcart around the U of T campus to help pay tuition. He opened the first store under the Coles name in 1940 with his brother Jack, and by the late 1970s, they operated the largest book retail chain in the country. He also launched the Coles Notes series of study guides. The company eventually came to be owned by Indigo Books & Music, and he thereafter focused on philanthropy, supporting the United Jewish Appeal and the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation, among other organizations.

Laura Dickson has 20 years of experience in health, public and non-profit administration. Prior to joining Habitat for Humanity Southern Alberta as director, families and volunteers in 2017, Laura was the executive director of Women In Need Society (WINS), a Calgary-based social enterprise that operates four thrift stores supporting programs and services to advance the lives of vulnerable women and families. From 2009 to 2011, Laura served as chief operating officer of the Calgary Homeless Foundation and was part of the team that launched Alberta’s first Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness. Recognized as one of Business in Calgary’s Leaders in 2016, Laura holds an MBA from Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C.

An internationally acclaimed statistician, the late Stephen Fienberg was formerly University Professor of Statistics and Social Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was best known for developing and using statistical applications to influence science and public policy in many areas, including aspects of human rights, privacy and confidentiality, forensics and survey- and census-taking. The co-author of seven books and the editor of 19 books, he also published more than 500 papers. He was the recipient of numerous statistical science awards and recognitions, and was active in the Pittsburgh community, serving in various roles for the boards of the Hillel Foundation-Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

Donald Guloien is the chief executive officer of Manulife. He has been named International Business Executive of the Year by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal and received the Arbor Award for his contributions to the University of Toronto in various leadership capacities. He was ranked among the Highest Rated CEOs in Canada in Glassdoor.com’s 2015 and 2016 Employees’ Choice Awards, based on assessments by current and past employees. He is director of the Geneva Association, vice-chair of the mayor of Shanghai's International Business Leaders' Advisory Council, a member of the board of the Business Council of Canada, a trustee of the Hospital for Sick Children and a member of the Campaign Cabinet for United Way, among other roles in the community and business.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of the international bestsellers No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need; This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate; The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; and No Logo. She is one of the organizers and authors of Canada's Leap Manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources, which has been endorsed by more than 200 organizations. In 2016 she was awarded Australia’s prestigious Sydney Peace Prize for “reminding us of the power of authentic democracy to achieve transformative change and justice.” She holds multiple honorary doctorates and frequently appears on global lists of top influential thinkers. She is married to fellow UC Alumni of Influence Award recipient Avi Lewis (BA 1988 UC).

Gregory Levey is an associate professor in the School of Professional Communication and the School of Graduate Studies at Ryerson University. His research interests are interdisciplinary, and include the intersections of communications, media, politics, business and writing. He is the author of Shut Up, I’m Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government and How to Make Peace in the Middle East in Six Months or Less Without Leaving Your Apartment. He has either written for, been featured in, or worked with The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Time, Newsweek, Macleans, Toronto Life, The New York Post, Salon, BBC, CNN, CBC and many others.

In 2013 he cofounded the startup Figure 1 Inc., a mobile app described as an Instagram for doctors, which allows health-care professionals around the world to collaborate. This year, the company earned the Social Impact Award from TechVibes’ Canadian Startup Awards. 

Chiling Lin is a famous Taiwanese model and actress. She spent her high school years in Toronto, then studied economics and art history at UC. After graduation, she returned to Taiwan and began her modeling career. In 2004, she starred in a series of advertisements, skyrocketing to national fame. Her celebrity initiated a Taiwanese craze for supermodels that commentators dubbed "the Chiling Lin phenomenon." One of the most famous faces in Asia, she has been an official spokesperson for both China Airlines and Longines and has starred in films and TV series in Hong Kong, China and Japan. Fluent in Cantonese, Japanese and English, she has served as Taiwan’s goodwill ambassador to Japan. The recipient of numerous awards for modelling and acting, in 2011 she established the Chiling Charity Foundation in support of child welfare.

John Kenneth Macalister was born in Guelph, Ontario and studied law at University College, where he won the prestigious Rhodes scholarship that took him to Oxford University in England. He joined the British Army after the Second World War broke out and was recruited into its intelligence corps in 1942. His first and only mission took him to France in 1943, where he was captured, imprisoned and tortured by German operatives. Refusing to divulge information the Nazis wanted, he was hanged at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944. His great promise and courage are commemorated in a park named in his honour in Guelph, a garden at Soldier’s Tower at U of T and the John Kenneth Macalister Scholarship at his former high school.