Recent shoot for CPA magazine featuring two Winnipeger’s who are from somewhere else  and decided to pursue their dreams here… I’ve included a brief excerpt but encourage you to read the entire article

ADRIAN ONG, FINANCIAL ANALYST, PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT OF MANITOBA (WINNIPEG)

Although he owns a car, Adrian Ong takes the bus whenever he can. It’s a little luxury this Winnipeg resident never had in his former life, where he always felt unsafe on public transit. “When I’m riding on the bus here I feel happy because I’m not afraid anymore,” he says. Home used to be the Philippines, and while Ong had a good lifestyle and a successful career managing the finances for his family’s food-industry chain, security was becoming a major concern. “We had maids and a driver, but we couldn’t take transit or go out on our own,” he says, noting that on two occasions, he’d been poked in the neck with a sharp object by potential muggers when walking on the sidewalk. Years later his sister and brother-in-law would be brutally killed by robbers outside the factory they owned. “You don’t want to live in a world of paranoia as it’s not healthy for the heart and soul.”

ASIA YUFIT, ASSOCIATE MANAGER, FINANCIAL AND REPORTING PROCESSES, CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, GREAT-WEST LIFE ASSURANCE CO. (WINNIPEG)

Born in Siberia, Asia Yufit wasn’t concerned about the Winnipeg winters. But she and her husband, Mark, did worry about how they would provide for the two children they had uprooted from Israel to be here.
Yufit was pregnant with her first daughter and living in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, when she and Mark started talking about relocating. “It was 2006 and the situation in our country wasn’t pleasant,” she says, still remembering the sound of rockets coming in from Lebanon. “It is one thing when you’re concerned only about yourself, but it is very different when there are children involved.”