2016 Nominees
Michael Callaghan
Law and Security Administration, 1984
Inspector, Belleville Police Service
Inspector Callaghan is currently responsible for the Criminal Investigations Branch, Forensic Identification Section, Fleet and Facilities, Courts Section, Internet Child Exploitation Unit, Freedom of Information Unit, Records Management Unit, Property Section, and is the New Belleville Police Service Facility Building and Community Safety Village liaison on the Board of Directors. He has been a keynote speaker on assorted topics – from mental health and terrorism to dactyloscopy – delivered at numerous colleges, universities and international conferences.
Danielle Hall
Law and Security Administration – Corporate and Commercial Security, 1991
Regional Vice President, BMO Bank of Montreal
Marta Iwanek
Photojournalism, 2013
Photographer, Toronto
Marta spent the winter of 2013-2014 in Ukraine covering the Maidan uprising in Kiev’s Independence Square where she photographed the revolution and the people’s resilience in making their voices heard. For her, this opportunity was extremely powerful in photographing many people who are driven by a single idea and desire a better life. In 2014, her project, ‘Inside Kiev, A society growing out of protest in Ukraine’ was shown on CTV’s Kevin Newman Live. In June 2015, the video “Ukraine in Crisis,” filmed for Maclean’s, won a Gold medal in the Online Video category at Canada’s National Magazine Awards. In 2016, her photo essay on the Maidan published in Maisonneuve Magazine won her the recognition of Best New Magazine Photographer and Best Photo Essay/Photojournalism at the National Magazine Awards.
Following her time in Ukraine, she worked a long-term contract as a photographer at the Toronto Star and earned two awards from the News Photographers Association of Canada for portrait and single multimedia for her work on stories at SickKids Hospital. Marta has also been the recipient of the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award, earning her a six-week paid internship at the Canadian Press in 2015. She was a winner in the Magenta Flash Forward competition for Emerging Photographers, a participant in the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop in New York State, twice selected for the New York Times Portfolio Review, and most recently she won first place in the international National Press Photographers Association competition for Best of Photojournalism in the portrait and personality category, for a photo of a young boy who lost three limbs while playing in his yard in war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Karen Mayfield
Architectural Drafting Technician
President, eSolutionsGroup Ltd.
With more than 25 years of experience in executive leadership and project management, Karen has led the company’s strategy to achieve multi-million dollar annual earnings. Today, eSolutionsGroup employs 58 people in Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa and Newmarket, Ontario as well as Brisbane, Australia. It boasts more than 300 clients across Canada and into the U.S. Despite executive responsibilities, Karen maintains a large number of client accounts and is personally responsible for more than one-third of the company’s annual revenues.
In addition to her extensive career in information technology, she is a member of the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists (OACETT) and has been a judge for the Economic Developers Council of Ontario’s Ontario Marketing Awards in 2009, 2010 and 2011. She was also honoured with the President’s award from the Economic Developers Council of Ontario in 2004-2005, only the second time in history that a vendor has been named for this prestigious award.
April Plumton
Registered Nursing Assistance, 1990
Diabetes Nurse Educator/Insulin Pump Program Coordinator – RPN, Belleville Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic
Farzana Wahidy
Photojournalism, 2009
Photojournalist, Various Newswire Agencies
Farzana has freelanced for a variety of international clients and her powerful and moving photographs have been published by the Sunday Times, Guardian, Le Monde 2, Medame Figaro, Gent magazine, CanWest News, Canadian Geographic, Getty Images, Polka Magazine, Le-temps Magazine, New Statesman, Deutsche-Welle, Save the Children, UNDP, ICRC, NRC and Internews. In 2009, Farzana was an Open Society Institute grantee for her documentary project on Afghan women. Farzana’s photographs have been presented in solo and group exhibitions across the world. In 2008, she was one of four recipients of a Merit Award from the All Roads Film Project and Photography Program sponsored by the National Geographic Society. Farzana is currently working on a project, Professionalism of Afghan Photojournalism, to increase professionalism in her craft. The overall goal is to increase professionalism by lobbying the copyright law and increasing the number of professional photographers in Afghanistan by teaching intermediate and advanced courses to photographers. copyright law has been reviewed by a committee of experts and 62 photographers have since been trained throughout Afghanistan.
In 2015, Farzana embarked on a journey to found the Afghanistan Photographers Association and Afghan Photo Agency. With the support of other photographers and influential people in media, the association and the agency were registered with the Afghanistan Ministry of Information and Culture and started their activities in May 2016.
The Afghan Photographers Association’s goal is to advocate, train and promote photographers and journalistic photography in Afghanistan. The Afghan Photo Agency’s goal is to create a source which will provide local media with legal access to high-quality images at a reasonable price. It is a platform for Afghan photographers to display their work and to keep Afghanistan in the picture of global mainstream media.