Julia Rivard (born September 17, 1976) is a Canadian sprint canoer who competed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Rivard and her teammates finished ninth in the K-4 500 m event at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She has since become a successful entrepreneur in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has held a number of leadership positions in Canadian Olympic sport and in the Arts and Culture community.
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Born and raised in North Bay, Ontario, Rivard was a successful multisport athlete, especially as an alpine skier and swimmer. At one time she was ranked in the top ten in Canada in the 200m backstroke and 800m freestyle. She started her canoe-kayak career at the relatively late age of 19. She moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia shortly afterward to pursue her training. She was a member of the Canadian national kayak team for three years.
Rivard's career highlights include a fourth-place finish in women's K-4 500m at the 1998 World Championships in Szeged, Hungary. In the 2000 World Cup events, she and her teammates won a pair of bronze medals, and also had a fourth- and a sixth-place finish. Her competitive career concluded with a ninth-place finish in the K-4 500 m event at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
Rivard is a member of the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame and the 2000 North Bay Female Athlete of the year.
While still a national team athlete, Rivard completed a Bachelor of Recreation Administration degree at Dalhousie University in 2000. In 2003 she completed her Bachelor of Graphic Design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD University).
After graduation, Rivard cofounded and ran an incubation center for independent creatives called Queen Street Studios in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Queen Street Studios was a new business of the year finalist at the Halifax Chamber of Commerce’s 2008 Halifax Business Awards, and was named one of the top ten Nova Scotia startups by the Nova Scotia Business Journal. In 2006, Rivard was nominated for the Globe and Mail's Top 40 Under 40. Since 2011 she has served as an alumni representative on the NSCADU Board of Governors.
Rivard merged Queen Street Studios with web site design and marketing firm Norex.ca in 2008, taking the position of Creative Director at Norex. Rivard led the Norex team in developing a medal table widget for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The widget had over 3 million downloads during the games and was among the most successful Apple / Mac downloads during that period. Rivard later led the Norex design and development of a results application for the 2009 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships held in Dartmouth. The Norex group of companies was named the eighth-fastest growing company in Atlantic Canada by Progress Magazine in 2009, the sixth-fastest growing in 2010,[1] and the second-fastest growing in 2011.[2]
Rivard is also a partner in Norex's sister company SheepDogInc.ca, Google's Canadian migration and application development partner. In March 2010, SheepDogInc.ca was one of only 40 developers invited to deploy a Google App, a time tracking application called gTrax, in the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace. In August 2010 Rivard was announced as the new Chief Executive Officer of the company. Prior to that she served as Vice President of Communications.
In 2011, Rivard's work leading SheepDogInc.ca was recognized with a nomination for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. In July, she was named an Atlantic Canadian finalist in the Information Technology category.[3] In August 2011, she was featured in a Canadian Business Journal article entitled "20 Young Women in Power." [4]
Since 2002 Rivard has continued her involvement in sport as a volunteer leader. She started at CanoeKayak Canada as athlete's representative on the Sprint High Performance Committee, and then moved onto the Executive Committee as Vice Chair Athlete Relations. She is currently the Vice Chair of Marketing and a member of the CanoeKayak Canada Board of Directors. She is a past Board member of Sport Nova Scotia and the Canadian Sport Centre Atlantic. In 2008, she accepted a Federal Appointment to the Board of Directors for the 2011 Canada Winter Games [5] which were held in Halifax. As a member of the Board her primary responsibilities included the development of the Games Legacy Plan,[6] which includes an Arts and Cultural legacy. She is currently a member-at-large (B Member) of the Canadian Olympic Committee.
In an operational role, Rivard has been to both the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver as a Team Services Officer on the Canadian Mission Team. In that role she managed team operations at both Games.
Rivard has three children: Oscar, born in 2002; Maximus, born in 2004; and Phoenix, born in 2004 and adopted by Rivard in the fall of 2009.