Rick: I grew up in Colorado and was motivated by my father to study at McGill. My father developed a romantic idea of the University from his brother-in-law (W.J. Le Rossignol, MD, a McGill graduate who moved from Montreal to Colorado in the late 19th century and was a well-known medical doctor in Denver and Santa Barbara, CA) and he had imparted this idea on me. So, at 17 years old, having never lived outside of suburban Denver, I took flight and moved into the McGill Ghetto in August of ’73.
Debra: Having grown up in Montreal, my introduction to McGill was more organic. I always saw McGill as the gold standard for a university. I grew up an avid skier and had retired from my competitive ski career as a teenager. Many of my peers chose to continue with the Canadian national ski team, but I felt the need to invest in my education.
Rick was older, well established and part of the McGill Ghetto community where he hosted parties and Ski Team meetings. I still remember his Saab with his Colorado license plate!”
Rick: When I got to McGill, the first thing I did was join the Ski Team. This was critical to my meeting Debra and a formative part of our McGill experience.
The medical student that headed the team, Dr. Brian Ward (Faculty of Medicine), was very inclusive and welcoming of all who wanted to join, regardless of their skiing abilities or prior racing experience. We even had sandwich makers on the team! It was really a community. Professor Ward had also started the McGill Ski Swap, which, under my leadership several years later as captain of the team, proved to be highly successful. In my last year at McGill, revenues from the Swap exceeded the entire Athletics budget!
We skied well and won the CAN-AMs. Debra was our top female racer.
Debra: The McGill Ski Team was my new community. Rick was older, well established and part of the McGill Ghetto community where he hosted parties and Ski Team meetings. I still remember his Saab with his Colorado license plate! We got to know each other over the years and started to go out in my last year. Now we have been married 41 years. Skiing remains an important part of our lives.
Rick: I received a superlative education at McGill. I studied in the Honours Immunology program, which was exceptional. At the time, no US school had anything approaching it. It prepared you for graduate studies and allowed you to interface with medical students.
It was also at McGill that I was moved by spectacular professors (including Dr. Norbert “Nobby” Gilmore) to think about curing diseases and developing therapeutics (as opposed to research), which was formative to launching my career in the biotech space.
Debra: The university experience isn’t just books and exams – it’s a place to define your future as an adult. The social, emotional, and athletic experience was an important part of our time at McGill. The diverse, international student community at McGill was a whole new world for Rick but also allowed me to meet students from different parts of Montreal that I didn’t know previously, as well as students from across Canada and the world. We met some of our closest, lifelong friends at McGill – it certainly left an impression on us.
My studies in Industrial Relations set me up to transition to a career in Human Relations after graduation, during one of the biggest recessions in history. I had a lengthy career in HR. I then started and later sold a consulting firm in the biotech space, took on leadership roles in not-for-profits and, most recently, started my own biotech company, which could not have happened without Rick. When we work together, we can combine our respective strengths in hard science and in project management.
Rick: In my career, I found that it was possible to do a lot of different things. I realized early on that moving from lab discovery to development is a challenge. It is difficult for many researchers to make the transition to the private sector, but I was adaptable. In the mid-1990s, I founded GlobeImmune with two of my colleagues and we were one of the first companies coming out of the University of Colorado School of Medicine to eventually go public.
I became interested in funding early-stage medical companies and was successful in raising capital. I worked with the Colorado state legislature to help faculty seek and secure funding and managed to create a fund to help translate discovery research from the lab bench to the clinic. (I was awarded the 2020 Tibbetts Award from the Small Business Administration for this work). I am quite proud that my efforts have impacted a significant number of my fellow faculty members and researchers across institutions in Colorado.
In 2020, after a 20-year leave of absence, I returned to the University of Colorado School of Medicine as the principal investigator on a grant from the National Institutes of Health to support the commercialization of technology, spin out companies (I have helped with five so far) and hopefully raise capital and enter into clinical trials in the next four years.
Debra: My advice to today’s students is follow your heart – do what feels good. If you’re not enjoying it, move on.
Rick: You should find opportunities and take them as they come. Keep your options open and get broad experience. Whether as a student or volunteer, get as much exposure as early as you can and take opportunities for mentorship when you can.
Finally, give back. It may make you busier than you want to be at times but there is a lot of value there. It is critical to remember where you came from. We all have a part to play in smoothing the path for the next generation.