Helping to set up others for success
David Roy (’08)
To David Roy (’08), Atlantic Canada will always be home, even though he has established his career in the USA and central Canada since earning his BBA degree. He grew up in Florenceville, a small town on the banks of the Saint John River in northwestern New Brunswick. Florenceville is also the home of McCain Foods Canada, the company for which Roy works in Toronto.
Although his work as Senior Brand Manager, Retail, keeps him busy, Roy is active in his spare time as well. “I like to travel. I also fly – I have my pilot’s licence in the US and Canada,” he says. “I do that a fair bit on the weekends. I’m working for an East Coast company that’s headquartered in my home town, so I get to spend more time with family, which is great.”
Coming to Acadia felt like a natural transition, he says. “It’s also a family school for us. My mother, uncle, and cousins have all gone there, and I liked the class size and the setting.”
Even before he entered Acadia’s BBA program, Roy knew what kind of work he wanted to do. “I’ve always been interested in business, and Acadia was a good starting point for me. The business school helped me to hone the skills I needed to get started in my career.”
He discovered his love of working with iconic consumer brands during his studies. After graduation, he worked in a variety of marketing roles with Smucker Foods of Canada, and later across the USA with the JM Smucker Company. Roy returned to Canada in 2017 to join McCain Foods.
“I love business, how dynamic it is and the pace of it,” he says. “And the business school at Acadia, with its smaller environment, fostered a lot of that. It exposed me to a lot of different aspects of business.”
Of the many professors who mentored him, he remembers one in particular. “I was lucky to have a fair number of professors who gave me extra time and focus,” he says. “Dr. Ernie Buist taught management finance, and he really pushed his students. Even students who were not necessarily interested in the field he was teaching took an interest in it. If you invested the time, he took the time with you.”
“Acadia has set up a lot of people for success. The experience is second to none, whether you’re heading off to do a master’s degree or heading into industry. It’s really on the alumni to give back, to set people up for the same opportunities we had.”
Roy sees serving on the Campaign Cabinet as a good way of being involved with Acadia. Acadia prepared Roy for the future in many ways, he believes. “It doesn’t get you all the way there, but Acadia will get you on your way. Acadia will set you up with connections that you’ll have for a lifetime.”