Directory of honorary doctorates

Under-Secretary-General Pramila Patten was appointed as the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict on April 12, 2017. Prior to this appointment and since 2003, Ms. Patten served as a member of the Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). She was the chairperson of the Working Group on General Recommendation No. 30 on “Women in Conflict Prevention, Conflict and Post-Conflict situations”.She has been ...
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Julia Elvidge (BSc, BASc, ICD.D)brings 30 years of high technology business experience to her work as an adviser, board member and investor. She is the co-founder of SheBoot, a bootcamp for women entrepreneurs of scalable tech and tech-enabled businesses preparing for their first external investment, a critical period for any founder’s journey but especially difficult for women. In addition, Julia works as an advisor at Invest Ottawa and serves on the Capital Angel Network (CAN) andCentre of Ex...
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Senator Michèle Audette is a well-known Indigenous leader. Daughter of a Québécois father and an Innu mother, Michèle Audette comes from the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam in Quebec. She has played a key role in transforming the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Quebec and Canadian society since the 1990s. At only 27 years of age, she was elected president of the association Quebec Native Women. In 2004, she was appointed associate deputy minister to the Secrétariat à ...
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Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng is vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town. Previously, she served as vice principal for research and innovation at the University of South Africa (Unisa) for five years, after serving three years as executive dean of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology at Unisa. Phakeng’s  academic career began in 1996 at the University of the Witwatersrand, as a research assistant. She left in December 2007 as an associate professor of mathematics educa...
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Dr. Molly Shoichet is a professor at the University of Toronto, where she is one of less than 2% of the faculty at the institution to hold the title University Professor. She is also Michael E. Charles Professor of Chemical Engineering at UofT, in a department where she serves as associate chair, graduate studies, as well. In 2018, she served as Ontario’s first (and only) chief scientist, working to enhance the culture of science. Shoichet has published over 650 papers, patents and abstr...
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Paul C. Genest has been senior vice-president of Power Corporation since 2016. From 2016 until 2020, he was senior vice-president of Power Financial. His background includes government, academia and business. He served in a number of portfolios as a deputy minister in the Ontario government, including intergovernmental affairs and francophone affairs, and as deputy minister responsible for the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games held in Toronto in 2015. He served in the federal go...
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Tina Boileau is the proud mother of two. Her son Jonathan, also known in the Ottawa region as the “butterfly child, was born with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB) and her daughter Noémy is a carrier of the gene. Since 2015, she has served as president of the Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Association of Canada (DEBRA Canada), while working full time for the federal government. Tina was first introduced to EB when Jonathan was born 19 years ago. She quickly became an...
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Born on March 2, 1951, the honourable Louise Charron received her primary and secondary education in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. She is married to William Blake and has one child, Gabriel Poliquin, and two step-sons, Michael and Steven Blake. She received a B.A. from Carleton University in 1972 and an LL.B. from the University of Ottawa in 1975. Called to the Ontario Bar in 1977, she practised law with the firm of Lalonde & Chartrand from 1977 to 1980, mostly in civil and criminal litigation....
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Kevin is N’lakapamux from the Lytton First Nation in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia. He is a graduate of Studio 58, Langara College’s professional theatre training program and Full Circle: First Nations Performance’s ensemble training program. He is an actor, playwright, director and the founding artistic director of Savage Society, a charity dedicated to producing Indigenous stories. In 2017, Kevin was named the first artistic director of Indigenous theatre at the National Arts Centre o...
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He and his spouse, Lynne Routhier, had four children, including two who died of lactic acidosis, a hereditary disease common in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, but rare elsewhere around the world. Laurie passed away in 1997 at the age of four and Raphaël passed away in 2000 at 20 months. The year Raphaël was born, 1998, 10 other children in the region were born with lactic acidosis. Pierre told himself that he couldn’t let lactic acidosis continue to wreak its devastation. He used all his ...
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