2008 SfC in the News: Toronto Star (February 25)

Despite a university degree and six years of work experience in advertising and marketing in Colombia, Bernardo Riveros hit a brick wall trying to get back into his profession in Canada. Wherever the newcomer went, employers asked him for his Canadian experience. "I showed them the reels of the commercials I produced. They'd say to me, 'Either you're a genius or a liar,'" recalled Riveros, who first came to Canada to study English in 1996, went home and then returned as a skilled immigrant two years later. "It was disappointing and frustrating that if you didn't do any of these things here, they didn't mean anything." However, Riveros, 39, has since used his earlier experience as a foreign student in Canada to build a successful business empire with two partners and a $300,000 loan. He now heads one of Toronto's largest private language schools offering English training to 5,000 visa students yearly at its four campuses, including two in Vancouver. Drawing on his own hardship in finding employment in Canada, Riveros makes a conscious effort to hire newcomers at the International Language Academy of Canada (ILAC). Ninety-five per cent of his support staff are new immigrants and his 70 teachers are natives from all cultural backgrounds. "For us, it's key that we have a multicultural, multilingual staff to serve our diverse student population. There's no one better to help a Japanese student, for example, than a Japanese-speaking staff person," noted the Bogota native. "Our students are from more than 50 countries," he explained. "Having a multicultural environment is important to all foreign students who all look for an international experience, meeting with interesting people who are not from the same nationalities. I think my own experience as a language student really helps me understand their needs." ILAC was voted Toronto's best language school in 2005 by Eye Weekly magazine. Last year, it beat 350 other competitors and received the Language Travel Magazine Award as the LTM Star English Language School of North America. Success doesn't always come easy as Riveros' school, like others in Canada, suffered a significant drop in enrolment during the SARS crisis in 2003, which scared foreign students away and forced one-third of the city's private language schools out of business. Riveros, winner of the 2002 Latin American Businessmanof the Year Award in Toronto, is a former president of the Colombian Canadian Professional Association, where he helps other skilled immigrants seek employment through a mentoring program. He also headed a fundraising campaign to buy the prostheses for a young Colombian immigrant, who was badly injured in an accident. But Riveros said the biggest award he's ever won in Canada is his wife, Angela Yepez, whom he met at his school. The couple has a three-year-old son, Esteban.