When Avril Benoît left her successful career as a broadcasting personality at the CBC her listeners, friends and colleagues were incredulous. Not many people leave a successful career at the top of their game for a lower profile role at a relief agency. But talk to Benoît now, and it all makes sense.
The former CBC Radio host left a 20-year journalism career in 2006 to join Medicins Sans Frontières (MSF) (Doctors Without Borders), an organization devoted to providing emergency health care to countries in crisis. Benoît, the director of communications at MSF, says it was a move that happened after she won a journalism fellowship at the University of Toronto and was able to spend a year exploring issues of her choice.
“I fully immersed myself in international human rights, women’s issues and overseas development assistance,” Benoît says. It was during that year, after meeting several leaders of not-for-profit organizations with journalism backgrounds, that Benoît says she had an “aha” moment.
“It was quite a revelation to me that I could work in something I felt passionate about,” explains Benoît, who lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.
While making documentaries for the CBC, Benoît began taking MBA courses at night to round out her skill set until the right opportunity came along.
When the position at MSF opened up, Benoît says, it seemed like the right time to make a change. “It was with an organization I very much respected on many levels,” she says. “I wasn’t disenchanted with journalism — I thought I could help [at MSF] in a concrete way.”
She also cites James Orbinski —the Canadian physician, humanitarian and former president of MSF — as someone she considers an inspiration.
“I’ve always seen him as outstanding,” she says.
For the past five years, rather than covering elections and garbage strikes, Benoît has been helping MSF respond to emergencies. She played an integral role in their relief efforts after the earthquake in Haiti and has had field assignments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Sudan.
She says her background in journalism has helped her in her new job in more ways than she could have imagined.
“The ability to synthesize complex issues, to know what questions to ask, to have the ability to persuade people to talk to you — journalists have a lot to offer,” she says. “But I’d rather run things now,” Benoît adds, admitting that she’d rather be part of the action.
There’s an impatience in her colleagues at MSF to get things done, which she says is an excellent fit with her personality.
“They’re a group of people who are spiritually intelligent but they’re also doers — they want to get on with things.”
Benoît — a mom to a 19-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter — says she is grateful to be able to have an international career but still enjoy the city.
She moved to Toronto from Montreal in 1997 after having been recruited by CBC Radio.
As a single mother, Benoît says it was a challenge raising kids on her own as a young professional, but she was able to find more balance being based in the city.
“Whatever reservations I had about moving here were overcome by Toronto’s charms and quirks,” Benoît says. “There is a lot of richness of experience right here.”
Benoît, 45, lives with her husband Allan Novak, a TV executive producer to whom she’s been married for seven years.
With so much focus on people in need in her life, Benoît says the one fun, selfish commitment she has is her house league hockey, which she plays at the Bill Bolton Arena in Seaton Village. She decided to try the sport after watching her kids play.
But whereas living in Toronto has helped shape her adult life, Ottawa-born Benoît says growing up in the nation’s capital with her parents and older sister had its own influence on her life direction.
Her grandfather was a public servant; her uncle was the Ottawa mayor; her mother a dedicated volunteer; and her father a neurosurgeon. For a time, Benoît’s family housed three Vietnamese refugee sisters from the boat people crisis in 1979.
“This was part of my upbringing and my ethical code started with that,” Benoît says. “It opened my eyes to crises where Canadians reach out and offer support.”
Journalism seemed a natural fit for the young Benoît, who felt the need to reach out to people. “Although every assignment may not feel that way, having a fair, balanced press for citizens is important,” she says. “CBC Radio is one of the great contributors to quality of life in Canada.” At 17 Benoît volunteered at Carleton University’s campus radio, playing industrial punk and alternative music on the overnight shift. After a turn as a reporter for a radio station in Smiths Falls, Ont., Benoît was recruited by CBC Radio in Ottawa where, she says, they were looking for a “young, hungry rabid dog” they could throw into situations.
In between stints at the CBC, Benoît journeyed to Lahr, Germany, with the Canadian Forces Network (broadcast to the Canadian Forces overseas) as an announcer and later did investigative reporting for CBC-TV in Montreal and hosted The Avril Benoît Show on NewsTalk CJAD, a local radio station. When she made the move to Toronto, Benoît began hosting segments of Here And Now, CBC Radio’s popular afternoon drive show, and co-hosted the current affairs program This Morning for two years. She has also worked on documentaries on a range of critical issues including gun crime in Rio and HIV in Nairobi.
She says she thrives when there is a crisis and a need to stay calm and make a plan amid chaos. “That’s what we do every day in radio,” she says.
Benoît mentions covering Haiti’s first presidential election after the Duvalier regime in 1990 as a high point in her career reporting on regions in transition.
Her experience and demeanour continues to be called on as MSF responds to crises in Ivory Coast, Bahrain and Libya.
As for the future, Benoit doesn’t rule anything out, not even a return to journalism.
“The leadership aspect of this work [at MSF] is what I hope to carry forward to anything I do in the future,” Benoît says. “I’ve never had a linear career path. I’m open to whatever comes up because something always does.”
