Ontario Agricultural College,
University of Guelph
Alumni Oral History

Amanda Richardson
B.B.R.M 2012

Interviewed by Sam Winger

Where are you originally from?
Rockwood, Ontario, just outside of Guelph.

How far from Guelph is that, roughly?
It's about 15-20 minutes. There is a small elementary school in Rockwood which is
where I went to elementary school. By the time high school came around, we went to
Guelph because there wasn't a high school in Rockwood. So we were very close.

What was your high school experience like then?
I went to high school in Guelph, but we lived out in the country in Rockwood. My family
lived on a farm, although we didn't necessarily farm. We had horses and so I spent a lot
of time out in the barn and spending time with the horses.

What made you apply to the University of Guelph?
From my last answer, you probably got the sense that I like horses. When I was in
grade 11, that's when they announced that the Bachelor of Bio Resource Management
program would be starting up. There was an equine major that would be available in
this program. I don't remember how I heard about it, but I heard about this new program
and it was basically a no-brainer for me. I knew I was going to go to university, but I
didn't really know what I wanted to do. I thought that I wanted to work with horses, which
I don't in my work life, but I thought that’s what I wanted to do, but beyond that, I didn't
really know what I wanted. I had started to realize that running a barn or being a horse
trainer probably wasn't what I wanted to do or lead to the lifestyle that I wanted. I had
been starting to think about maybe doing a business degree or doing something in
agriculture and then I could enjoy horses in my spare time. But then the equine
management program came to be. It combined business and science, so I knew that I'd
get kind of that business background while spending four years studying the thing that I
like the most.

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Was Guelph the only choice for you? Did you apply to other schools
or is it just kind of Guelph?
Guelph was my first choice, but I also applied to another university. I don't remember
which one it was now, but I just knew that I needed a backup plan in case I didn't get
into Guelph. I applied to a couple different programs at the University of Guelph. I think I
applied to the agriculture program as well. Everything else was just a backup, I definitely
knew what I wanted to do.

Did you ever consider changing your program throughout your time
at Guelph?
No, definitely not. I mean, it was a brand-new program I was in. I started in the second
cohort. The first two years were still at the Kemptville campus when I started. So I did
my first and second year there and then I did my third and fourth year on the main
campus. There were definitely some growing pains with the program, but I enjoyed the
content and I had made some really great friends.

What has since happened to the Kemptville campus?
The University of Guelph closed that campus in 2014. The campus operated similarly to
the Ridgetown campus that they still have. A lot of research happened there. There was
an agriculture certificate programme. The BBRM program was the only degree program
that had anything at that campus. So the equine management degree program 1st and
2nd year were at Kemptville campus. If I'm remembering correctly, the environmental
majors within that program did their first two years at Ridgetown and then their third or
fourth year at the main campus. I think it's because the campuses were largely
agriculture-based and so to be able to do agriculture research you need different
environmental conditions, soil types and heat units. The University of Guelph actually
has 12 or 14 different research stations around Ontario, where they do different
agricultural research.

Did you enjoy your first year? Do you have fond memories of it?
I made some of my best friends in my first week of school. I just got married this past
summer and two of the girls that were in my bridal party were my first two friends that I
made in university. We met during orientation week activities and became friends and
have stayed friends ever since. I think because it was such a niche program, and a very
small program. We were all a bunch of horse girls, so we had a lot in common. All the
conditions were right for making lifelong friends. Then I had some great courses, some
great professors. Like I said, we were on a regional campus, so I really missed out on
that big exciting first year living in residence kind of experience, but I definitely made
some great friends out of it.

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Did you live in residence in your first year or off campus?
I lived in residence. It was tiny, not like what the Guelph residence buildings look like.
Picture the entire campus as one big residence building and one very small residence
building. There were approximately 200 people that lived there.

Did you enjoy your life in residence?
Yes, it was good. Just like at the main campus, there were some fun pub nights and
yeah, everyone kind of liked it. The nice thing about it being really small is you really got
to know everyone.

Where did you live after your first year?
It's a pretty small town. So first and second year students generally lived in residence
there. The first year and second year I was in residence. Third year when we moved to
Guelph, I lived in a house with a couple of girls in my program.

Were there any hard times at the beginning for you?
Yes, I would say the first and second year were a little challenging. It was a very small
campus, so it was pretty isolating.

In your time at Guelph, were there any classes that stuck out to you
as favorites, would you say?
Ooh, what a great question. After my second year I did an internship course for an
event management company that had wanted someone with equine experience
because they were doing a horse show or equine trade shows at the time. They also
had a big agriculture farm show that was in its 20th year or so at that time. I started
working for that organization as an internship and then through my third and fourth year ,
I stayed on part-time and then that led to my first full time career job when I graduated.
It was an incredible experience to get to learn some real-life skills and do some real-life
networking that launched what has been a fantastic career for me.

Do you have any fond memories of professors from your time at
Guelph?
Yes, I do. There's quite a few and I'm just trying to make sure I'm linking them with the
right classes. Dr. Peter Physick-Sheard taught our Trends and Issues class. He really
encouraged debate and thoughtful discussion, and I always really liked that. On our
graduation day, he encouraged me to pursue a Master’s degree. I didn’t at the time, but

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he planted the seed and nearly I decade later I pursued a Master of Communications
Management at McMaster University.

Were you involved in any extracurriculars at Guelph?
Yes. I was involved in College Royal, and other events on campus as well. College
Royal is in the fall and it's like the Ontario Agricultural College’s open house. There's a
cattle show and you can walk through vet college and there's activities and that kind of
thing. The main campus has one as well, and there was one at Kemptville.

Did you take part in any of the OAC traditions?
Yes. I'd like to offer more of an answer than “I went to Aggie pubs,” but that one is top of
mind!

You already mentioned some fond memories at Guelph but are there
any others you haven’t shared yet?
This is another really cool course that I did. In my first or second year I took a course
that was essentially a major paper, or a big project activity based on something that
we've done. About 15 of us took this course. We went on a class trip to the World
Equestrian Games in Kentucky. It was a 10-day trip, and we went to Churchill Downs
and went to the Kentucky Horse Park and just had this incredible time with the friends I
was speaking about earlier. They were there as well. It was this big trip, and we just had
such a great time touring around. We got to see this incredible international horse show.
It had jumping and dressage and reining horses and driving horses. Then to tie it back
to the course we had, we came home and wrote a big paper or project about our
experience there. It was incredible.

You already mentioned some very close friends you made at
university, but are there many others you’ve kept in touch with?
Yes, on a more casual basis though. I run into lots of people I went to school with at a
farm show or a conference not just within my program, lots of people that I would have
met at school. I have a really large professional network from people that I met at
Guelph as well as a few personal close friends.

What year did you end up graduating from Guelph?
2012.

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What has life after university looked like?
When I first graduated, I started working in a job that I did that internship with. I worked
for Canada's Outdoor Farm Show and Canada's Outdoor Equine Expo. In the different
roles I did, I looked after sponsorship for the events. At one point, I coordinated all of the
livestock animals programming, and then I started working on marketing and
communications for the events. After I had worked there for a few years in a full-time
capacity, I moved on. I was really enjoying the marketing and communication side of
things. And then I started at an advertising agency that is based out of Calgary, but with
an office in Guelph. It’s called AdFarm and the provide marketing and communications
services to agricultureal companeis. I worked as an account manager at a company
called Dow Agrosciences, which is now part of Corteva, and I also got to do some work
with 4-H Canada and their Global Youth Aummit. I call those two years my “marketing
communications boot camp.” I learned so much from that job. And then after two years,
I came back to Canada's Outdoor Farm Show, and at that time, the company was also
running Ag in Motion, which is an outdoor farm show just outside of Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan. I was the communications manager for those two shows for a little while
when the pandemic hit. I led our digital teams as we did digital events for two years and
then also moved into corporate communications for the parent company of those
shows. I currently work as Director of Communications and Programs for the Canadian
Agri-Food Policy Institute.

Did COVID have a big impact on your career?
It did, working in events, it was pretty major. When we first started hearing about
COVID, when the lockdowns first started in March I remember having conversations
like, “Ok, well, maybe it's good that it's in March because we'll have these six weeks of
lockdowns, and then it'll blow over. Everything will be fine and back to normal for our
July show and definitely for our September show.” We were making these assumptions
based on the best information that we had at the time, but boy we were wrong. We
didn’t know we were going into two years of not being able to host events. And the thing
about events is a lot of the work you do is planning these events. Normally by the time
March rolls around, a lot of the planning is done. It had a really big impact on our team,
on our business, and also we weren't able to bring the industry together and bring
farmers together with the industry in the way that we used to. It definitely had a big
impact, but we learned a lot about digital events and I learned a lot about issues
management and crisis communications.

Do you remember your first event that was back in person?
Our first back in person would have been July 2022. Even then there was so much
uncertainty. Saskatchewan was a little further ahead in their COVID recovery than we
were here in Ontario. We were planning, we were going full-steam ahead, but we

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realized this could change at any time. We were pretty fortunate, and we were pretty
excited by the time we finally got there and it was all a go.

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