Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Daniel Guerard - RPI's Spotlight Award Winner

Kevin Cronin, RPI President & Daniel Guerard, Rideau IT Director

I’ve worked with Daniel Guerard for over 12 years. Daniel is Director of Information Securities and Technologies here at Rideau.

I first met Daniel when he was working for a third party software provider. They were working on a website project for our IT department. Daniel was putting in incredibly long hours and working late into the night.

I happened to log onto the development site early one morning and immediately noticed a banner on the top of the site. It said “Lache Pas La Patate Daniel!" The expression makes no sense in English… literally translated it means “don’t give up the potato.” I was not amused, until I found out it was a French expression that meant "don't give up" and that Daniel’s colleagues put it up as a mark of respect to recognize all his hard work and efforts to perfect all elements of my website.

The company Daniel worked for went out of business several years later and we made a concerted effort to recruit him. I’m glad to say our efforts paid off! He is the number three man in Rideau’s IT department and manages a staff of about 10 professionals.

Daniel has also served with distinction on Recognition Professionals International’s Marketing and Communications committee for the past two years. His work merited one of three of RPl’s Spotlight Award. His citation read:

“Daniel has been a very active member of the Marketing Communications committee member and goes way above and beyond in his contribution to this committee. Daniel was recruited to come and help with some of our analytics/reporting from a search engine optimization perspective. One the key elements that Daniel helped deliver is report on understanding our website traffic patterns. His contribution went beyond his technical expertise into many value add ideas that helped us become better marketers of RPI.”

Many of Daniel’s colleagues knew he was getting this award and it was one of the best kept secrets in Rideau for the last month. As a surprise, we decided to have Daniel, his wife Evelyne and two young sons come out to the RPI conference in Las Vegas to accept the award in person.

I’m so proud of Daniel and to see him recognized by others is not surprising. Over the years he has become a key member of Rideau’s management team.

BTW… Dan’s wife Evelyne is an accomplished artist in her own right and you can see her work at http://evelynebouchard.com/

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