Awards celebrate Calgary’s best and brightest innovators and changemakers

This year’s Avenue Magazine Top 40 Under 40 marks 25 years of acknowledging Calgary’s best and brightest — that’s some 1,000 amazing community builders, leaders and artists who have made our city a better place to live, work and play. And, over the last quarter-century, 140 University of Calgary faculty, staff and alumni have joined those ranks.

On Nov. 2, 45 honourees (20 of whom have UCalgary connections; some dual winners were also announced) accepted their Top 40 Under 40 honours at the Southern Alberta Jubliee Auditorium among a crowd of colleagues, families, fans and fellow alumni.

To earn a spot amongst these influential honourees, nominees often include a mix of qualities including drive, flexibility, agility, speed, persuasiveness, charisma and a whole lot of ambition.

"I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the exceptional honourees of the 2023 Avenue Magazine Top 40 Under 40," says UCalgary President Ed McCauley. "Among these leading changemakers, innovators and leaders are several UCalgary faculty, staff and alumni who are not just shaping, but reinventing the future. We’re proud to celebrate this year’s honourees and the 25th anniversary of the program.

“UCalgary is truly the place to start something, and we’re proud to contribute to Calgary’s success.”

Over the next few editions of UToday, we will profile the UCalgary-connected members of the Class of 2023.

In Part 1, you’ll meet: Anna Murphy; Dr. Husein Moloo, MD’13; Dr. Lauren DeDieu, PhD; Dr. Steven Yip, MD; Andrea Marie Urquhart, LLB'10; Stephanie Hutchinson, BComm’07; and Dr. Julie Deleemans, PhD’22.

Anna Murphy

Community leader and equity advocate, UCalgary senator

Raised in rural Alberta, Anna Murphy faced many challenges as she affirmed her identity as a transgender woman. Dedicated to advocacy for the LGBTQ2S+ communities, women’s issues, and transgender issues and rights, Murphy has since established herself as a champion for equity, inclusion, diversity and accessibility.

She holds several prolific volunteer positions, including UCalgary senator and vice-chair of the Gender, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee of the Social Wellbeing Advisory Committee of The City of Calgary. She was recently recognized as a Calgary Stampede Western Trailblazer and received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for her volunteerism and significant contributions to the province.

Dr. Husein Moloo, MD’13

Clinical lecturer, Cumming School of Medicine
CEO and co-founder, PurposeMed

Right this minute, somewhere in Canada, someone is seeking medical care in a hospital emergency room because they couldn't access appropriate care anywhere else. Dr. Husein Moloo is trying to change that. He decided to pursue medicine when his brother developed leukemia as a child. He saw how physicians treated his brother and wanted to have that effect on other folks.

In 2019, while working as a hospitalist physician for Alberta Health Services, Moloo co-founded PurposeMed Inc., a virtual-care company that provides specialized medical care for underserved communities. PurposeMed operates three services: Freddie, which delivers HIV-prevention medication (PrEP) to LGBTQ2S+ Canadians; Frida, which provides diagnosis and treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; and Foria, a virtual-care service for transgender Canadians.

Dr. Lauren DeDieu, PhD  

Associate professor (teaching), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary

Dr. Lauren DeDieu’s interest and aptitude for math drove her to get her master’s and then her PhD to teach math at the university level. Now an associate professor at UCalgary, DeDieu teaches and co-ordinates more than 2,000 undergraduate students each year. She empowers her university students to turn their fear of math into confidence through low-stakes assessments, allowing them to continue trying a problem until they master it.

In Canada, less than 25 per cent of people employed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women and DeDieu is committed to combating gender bias in her field. She has contributed to more than a dozen outreach initiatives for K-12 students, including the annual Calgary Junior Math Contest, the SNAP Math Fair, the Math Attack Summer Camp for Girls and an interactive math session for Canadian Indigenous high school students called Indigenous U.

Dr. Steven Yip, MD

Medical oncologist, Tom Baker Cancer Centre
Clinical associate professor, Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine

Dr. Steven Yip is a medical oncologist working to improve access to cutting-edge molecular testing for cancer in Alberta. He leads a program called POET (Precision Oncology and Experimental Therapeutics), which has connected more than 1,000 patients with advanced cancers to molecular testing to learn more about their disease.

Yip is especially driven to improve care for Indigenous communities and people residing in rural areas. In 2019, he helped create the first telehealth cancer clinic for patients who live far from a cancer centre. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these telehealth resources became more readily available to all cancer patients. Today, he is co-chair of the Alberta Prostate Cancer Research Initiative, helping accelerate research ideas from the laboratory to the clinic for patients facing prostate cancer.

Andrea Marie Urquhart, LLB'10 

Lawyer and partner, Roulston Urquhart Criminal Defence

A partner in Roulston Urquhart Criminal Defence firm, the biggest all-female defence law firm in Calgary and one of the premier criminal law boutiques in Alberta, Andrea Urquhart has served as counsel on some of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last decade. Prior to making the Dean’s List upon graduation from the Faculty of Law, Urquhart volunteered with Student Legal Assistance, a non-profit organization whose objective is to provide access to legal assistance for those who would otherwise not qualify.

In recent years, she has gained national prominence for cases such as one in which she argued successfully for a client whose charter rights were infringed. She continually strives to educate others on the importance of legal representation for all — something she believes is vital to living in a democracy.

Stephanie Hutchinson, BComm’07

President and program director, YYC Music Awards
Vice-president and co-owner, Chronograph Records
Director of programs, National Music Centre

Calgary hasn’t always been recognized as a major player in the Canadian jazz scene, but Stephanie Hutchinson’s record label, Chronograph Records, is helping to change that. Hutchinson and her husband, Kodi, BComm’05, an award-winning jazz bassist, launched the label in 2004, and it has since become one of the top-five jazz labels in the country.

Recognized as one of the top music executives in Western Canada, Hutchinson has released more than 100 prairie-led projects — jazz, as well as country, folk and other genres — to international markets, and Chronograph artists have been nominated for a combined five Juno Awards, with one win. Hutchinson also advocates for the local music scene in her volunteer roles as president and program director of the YYC Music Awards. She recently joined the National Music Centre in October as director of programs.

Dr. Julie Deleemans, PhD’22

Postdoctoral associate, Cumming School of Medicine

At the age of 18, Dr. Julie Deleemans was diagnosed with Stage 4 laryngeal cancer and had to choose between removing her voice box and getting high-dose chemoradiation, or dying before her 19th birthday. Today, Deleemans is a research fellow at UCalgary with a PhD in psychosocial oncology.

Through her research and clinical work, she found a connection between cancer treatments, especially chemotherapy, and long-term disturbance of the gut microbiome, which was related to poorer psychosocial and gastrointestinal (GI) health in cancer survivors. Deleemans’ PhD research, the Chemo-Gut Project, was the first of its kind, looking at how treatments for cancer impact the gut microbiome and how changes in gut microbes may impact psychosocial and GI health.