the Portico
“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”
By Teresa Pitman
It’s no wonder Theresa Firestone, B.A.Sc. ’78, places a high value on volunteering: she’s convinced her volunteer experience helped her get her first job.
Firestone hadn’t done any volunteering in high school, but not long after she enrolled in U of G’s family studies program, she and some friends dropped by the campus volunteer office. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but it changed her life. Two opportunities caught her eye: working with children with learning disabilities and helping developmentally handicapped adults living in a community residential setting.
“I found that I liked it,” says Firestone. “In fact, I liked it more than going to classes because it was reality, being in the real world. In those days, we didn’t have much in the way of practicums, and I liked being where the action was and working with real people.”
Soon she was spending 30 hours a week as a volunteer while continuing to attend classes and keep up her grades. She graduated with not only a degree but also a track record of hundreds of hours of volunteer work experience.
“Because I was able to talk about that experience, I was hired into a more management-type position than other graduates were,” she says.
Her volunteer work meant much more than padding out a résumé, however. Firestone believes it helped her become more compassionate and more understanding of the needs of others facing challenges.
Working with the Ontario Ministry of Health, she moved through a number of positions with significant responsibility. She says that’s one of the advantages of public service — the opportunity to gain broad experience in less time than it would typically take in the private sector.
Early in her career, she worked in home care, legislation policy, and public and mental health, and was also director of the ministry’s psychiatric hospitals branch, overseeing the 10 psychiatric hospitals run by the province. She went on to serve as director of the Drug Reform Secretariat and then director of the ministry’s drug programs branch.
Firestone says her proudest accomplishment was leading the team that developed the province’s Trillium Drug Program, which helps employed people who have prescription drug costs that are high in relation to their income.
“Before the program was introduced, people were having to make decisions about whether to eat or buy their medications,” she says. “There were also people making significant amounts of money who still couldn’t afford their drugs because they were so expensive. It’s a program I’m very pleased to have been involved with.”
In 1996, Firestone left public service to became president and CEO of the Canadian Wholesale Drug Association. In 1999, she went to work for Pfizer Canada Inc. as vice-president, government and public affairs. After six years in that role, she decided she’d like a different perspective of the business, so she switched jobs with the vice-president, sales.
“I had no experience in sales, and he had no experience in government, so it was an interesting experiment. It was great for me to have a chance to learn the other side of the business.”
She obviously learned it well, because two years later she was appointed country manager for Pfizer Austria, responsible for managing all aspects of the company’s business in the country.
Much was different in Austria — for one thing, business is conducted in German, which Firestone doesn’t speak — but she was surprised by one aspect that was familiar. When she met with representatives of the Austrian health-care system and mentioned she’d worked for the Ontario government, they told her they had copied and used the province’s pharmaceutical guidelines — guidelines she had actually developed and implemented years before.
“So I still had these connections to home,” she says.
Firestone’s husband moved to Vienna with her, but her son and daughter remained behind to attend university. In 2009, she moved back to Canada to take on new responsibility as general manager of the established products business unit at Pfizer Canada.
Before moving to Austria, Firestone had been involved in a lot of charitable work, including serving as vice-chair of the Childhood Cancer Foundation. Language was a barrier to getting similarly involved in Austria, but she actively promoted volunteering among her Pfizer employees.
“People could sign up and take a half day or day off to do volunteer work with one of the charities we support in Vienna,” she says. “Pfizer donates funds as well, but many places don’t need just funding — they also need people to help out. Our program tries to make it easy for people to volunteer by giving them time off and encouraging them to sign up with their colleagues.”
It was Firestone’s commitment to volunteering at U of G and beyond that inspired the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences to introduce an annual Student Volunteer Award in 1999.
“I’m very pleased about that award,” she says. “I know that for many students, volunteering seems tough to fit in. It can be hard with school, maybe a part-time job and making the adjustment to living away from home, but volunteering is such an important part of life. We need to give back.”
She credits U of G with giving her the sense of social responsibility that has guided her in making decisions throughout her career.
“It started for me when I went to that volunteer office and made those connections. I don’t know if I would have had the same experience or developed the same values if I’d gone to university anywhere else.”
