Alumni spotlight

“I created a model by which new graduates could stitch together a number of short-term experiences to make up two years, which at the time was an engineering training requirement. But to do that, I had to convince APEGA that they should accept this kind of a role. Today, you’d call it the gig economy.”

Running EngIT led him straight back to Schulich, where in 1995, he was recruited to help run the Engineering Internship Program.  Under his leadership, it won awards and became the biggest program of its kind in Canada. “We were always looking to create superior graduates,” he says.

Dorjee himself chose engineering because, like most of the hundreds of engineering students he’s worked with over the decades, he was good at math and science. “It was a practical decision,” he says. “Engineering is a fantastic primary education because it teaches you, more than anything else, to be that solution seeker.”

But he’s looking for solutions well beyond any technical issues. “It applies for society, it applies everywhere,” he says. “It’s important to pay attention to the politics and what's happening around the world.” 

After all, politics shaped his life. “I was born in India in the Tibetan refugee settlements. My parents had fled to India after the occupation of Tibet. My father passed away when I was about three years old, so my mom was widowed at an early age,” he says.  Years later, his mom married a fellow Tibetan refugee who had settled in Canada, and Dorjee and his family came to Calgary.  

After his second year at Schulich, he took a year off to work at the Office of Tibet in New York City, London and Zurich, volunteer at schools in refugee camps in India and finally visit Tibet. “I went to Tibet for the first time in my life and saw family that had been completely separated. We had just lost touch completely because Tibet was so closed. I traveled into remote villages at about 13,000 feet.” 

After that “formative experience,” Dorjee came back to campus to pick up his studies and voluntarily worked with the International Students Association, Amnesty International and Students’ Union. Later, he worked with the Dalai Lama’s office on human rights and helped Calgary agencies assist immigrants. His lifelong work has been recognized with a long list of awards and accolades, most recently the Order of Canada.

Dorjee believes we all have a responsibility to each other by trying to make a difference—whether on the streets protesting injustice or sitting at a board room table where decisions are made. “It's finding that balance always,” he says. “And being comfortable in both places.”