Renée Ellis returns to the Faculty of Music
This past March, Renée Ellis [BMus 98, Op. Dip. 99], newly appointed Administrative Manager in the Faculty of Music, received her first Laurier pay cheque on the day she was scheduled to make the final payment on a student loan. The coincidence is poetic given her past experiences and future plans.
“Laurier is the reason I moved to Waterloo,” she says, explaining how she came from St. Catharines to the Music Faculty to study voice with pedagogue David Falk; now responsible for the daily operations of the Faculty, her new job allows her to draw on a rich skill set acquired from experiences in both music and business.
In her final student years at Laurier, Ellis had a part-time telemarketing job with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (KWS). She worked with fellow Faculty of Music students, and speaks fondly of the summer walks to and from work at the Centre in the Square with her colleagues: “We worked together and played together, forging fast, strong friendships as we went through one of the most profound growth experiences in our lives. Many of us were away from home for the first time, and all of us were passionate about the same subject.”
Many of the friendships Ellis formed years ago have continued. Sophie Roland, Sue Doran, Carl Borrowman, Jody Davenport, Kristen Lawr, and Mark Daboll are still friends.
In her opera diploma year, Ellis became supervisor of the telemarketing operation, and after graduating from Laurier, she continued rising in the KWS organization, becoming a marketing manager there. She attended more than 100 events a year outside of regular office hours. She kept up her vocal lessons but found it frustrating that her work schedule kept her from performing. With only a marketing background, Ellis applied for the position of executive assistant to the CEO at kidsLINK, but still won the job. With evenings and weekends once again hers, Ellis became involved in Musica D’Amici, a group made up of Laurier grads, which performed opera revues in the GTA.
Four years later, she moved to Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute (PI) working in several roles in marketing and communications. Again, Ellis rose in the ranks, becoming public events producer there. In that role, she became adept at orchestrating high profile events, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Prime Minister Stephen Harper among those involved in events she planned. Ellis was also the operations manager for the Quantum to Cosmos Festival which celebrated the Institute’s 10th anniversary, and she programmed PI’s acclaimed public lecture series which brings outstanding scientists to the community each year to speak about their research. Culling science journals and websites, conversing with scientists, Ellis found people who were world-class researchers and engaging science communicators, a necessary combination given the sophisticated audience that attends PI’s open lectures. “Always, my goal was to have people leave the lecture having learned something,” she says.
One of Ellis’s favourite events: she brought Chris Lintott, Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium, to PI to speak about his efforts with Zooniverse which has involved more than 500,000 citizen volunteers in a host of on-line science projects, including one to classify galaxies using pictures taken by the Hubble Space telescope.
As she did at the Symphony, Ellis executed more than 100 evening and weekend events at PI; because of this schedule, she couldn’t accept vocal performance opportunities—in 2009 she had to step down from the lead role in a Montana Lyric Opera production of The Magic Flute because of work commitments.
Now, six weeks into her job at Laurier, Ellis remembers the scientists she worked with at PI and already sees parallels to the music professors at Laurier. “Both disciplines share a passion and enthusiasm,” she says. “There’s a similar critical and creative inquiry that takes place that isn’t immediately obvious. But each is reaching outside of what already exists, perhaps in search of beauty.”
As a student, Ellis was a member of the guitar studio for a year, and she recalls what all of her Faculty of Music colleagues were studying. Her sense of the place, acquired years ago, has already been useful on her new job—one of her first tasks has been organizing the year-end juries which involve all music students, and in which she participated years ago. “The faculty and staff welcome has been incredibly warm—most of them remember me from my student days.”
Dean of Music Dr. Glen Carruthers says Ellis’s history makes her the perfect fit for a complex position. “She understands the life of a music student because she’s lived it. She also understands music as a performing arts and academic discipline, and she knows first-hand of the Faculty of Music’s unique profile within Laurier. Add to this mix her wealth of administrative experience, particularly in the arts, her ability to work with a wide variety of people, and a seemingly ever-present sense of humour, and you have the ideal person for the job.”
Away from the office, Ellis sings every Sunday at a Kitchener church, a gig she got as a student. She says she wants more now that she has returned to Laurier: “I felt a pull back to this place, and I hope to have the time and the inspiration to do more singing.”
“Laurier is the reason I moved to Waterloo,” she says, explaining how she came from St. Catharines to the Music Faculty to study voice with pedagogue David Falk; now responsible for the daily operations of the Faculty, her new job allows her to draw on a rich skill set acquired from experiences in both music and business.
In her final student years at Laurier, Ellis had a part-time telemarketing job with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (KWS). She worked with fellow Faculty of Music students, and speaks fondly of the summer walks to and from work at the Centre in the Square with her colleagues: “We worked together and played together, forging fast, strong friendships as we went through one of the most profound growth experiences in our lives. Many of us were away from home for the first time, and all of us were passionate about the same subject.”
Many of the friendships Ellis formed years ago have continued. Sophie Roland, Sue Doran, Carl Borrowman, Jody Davenport, Kristen Lawr, and Mark Daboll are still friends.
In her opera diploma year, Ellis became supervisor of the telemarketing operation, and after graduating from Laurier, she continued rising in the KWS organization, becoming a marketing manager there. She attended more than 100 events a year outside of regular office hours. She kept up her vocal lessons but found it frustrating that her work schedule kept her from performing. With only a marketing background, Ellis applied for the position of executive assistant to the CEO at kidsLINK, but still won the job. With evenings and weekends once again hers, Ellis became involved in Musica D’Amici, a group made up of Laurier grads, which performed opera revues in the GTA.
Four years later, she moved to Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute (PI) working in several roles in marketing and communications. Again, Ellis rose in the ranks, becoming public events producer there. In that role, she became adept at orchestrating high profile events, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Prime Minister Stephen Harper among those involved in events she planned. Ellis was also the operations manager for the Quantum to Cosmos Festival which celebrated the Institute’s 10th anniversary, and she programmed PI’s acclaimed public lecture series which brings outstanding scientists to the community each year to speak about their research. Culling science journals and websites, conversing with scientists, Ellis found people who were world-class researchers and engaging science communicators, a necessary combination given the sophisticated audience that attends PI’s open lectures. “Always, my goal was to have people leave the lecture having learned something,” she says.
One of Ellis’s favourite events: she brought Chris Lintott, Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium, to PI to speak about his efforts with Zooniverse which has involved more than 500,000 citizen volunteers in a host of on-line science projects, including one to classify galaxies using pictures taken by the Hubble Space telescope.
As she did at the Symphony, Ellis executed more than 100 evening and weekend events at PI; because of this schedule, she couldn’t accept vocal performance opportunities—in 2009 she had to step down from the lead role in a Montana Lyric Opera production of The Magic Flute because of work commitments.
Now, six weeks into her job at Laurier, Ellis remembers the scientists she worked with at PI and already sees parallels to the music professors at Laurier. “Both disciplines share a passion and enthusiasm,” she says. “There’s a similar critical and creative inquiry that takes place that isn’t immediately obvious. But each is reaching outside of what already exists, perhaps in search of beauty.”
As a student, Ellis was a member of the guitar studio for a year, and she recalls what all of her Faculty of Music colleagues were studying. Her sense of the place, acquired years ago, has already been useful on her new job—one of her first tasks has been organizing the year-end juries which involve all music students, and in which she participated years ago. “The faculty and staff welcome has been incredibly warm—most of them remember me from my student days.”
Dean of Music Dr. Glen Carruthers says Ellis’s history makes her the perfect fit for a complex position. “She understands the life of a music student because she’s lived it. She also understands music as a performing arts and academic discipline, and she knows first-hand of the Faculty of Music’s unique profile within Laurier. Add to this mix her wealth of administrative experience, particularly in the arts, her ability to work with a wide variety of people, and a seemingly ever-present sense of humour, and you have the ideal person for the job.”
Away from the office, Ellis sings every Sunday at a Kitchener church, a gig she got as a student. She says she wants more now that she has returned to Laurier: “I felt a pull back to this place, and I hope to have the time and the inspiration to do more singing.”
