Since arriving to Canada in 2016, Wagner has earned a diploma from Lethbridge College, obtained Canadian citizenship, and received the ASET CEO Award. (Photos: ASET)    

By Christian Oldale

Ukrainian Lethbridge resident receives ASET CEO award

May 2, 2023 | 12:26 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A woman who left Ukraine for Lethbridge seven years ago has been given a prestigious award.

Mila Wagner moved from Ukraine to Alberta in 2016 in response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and has been awarded the inaugural CEO Award from the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET).

The award was presented to Wagner during an awards ceremony held by the association on April 21, 2023. She had been a part of dozens of media interviews in summer 2022 about the two ASET initiatives.

Those include a fee waiver for engineering technologists with refugee status and a competency-based assessment program that gives foreign-trained and other engineering technology professionals a faster route to establishing careers in Alberta.

In a news release from ASET, CEO Barry Cavanaugh said, “Mila was given this prestigious award for her exceptional and transformative contribution to ASET as a volunteer interview subject. Her enthusiasm for and dedication to the effort knew no bounds and she was always 100 per cent committed to it.”

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When Wagner and her then three-year-old son Nikita moved to Alberta, she found out that her engineering technology related degrees did not translate to getting a job in Canada.

Wagner explained, “I had no relatives, I had to take menial jobs, mostly cleaning, in order to pay for English school, rent and other living expenses.”

After working for a while, Mila began her education at Lethbridge College in the Civil Engineering Tech program in 2018. She graduated from the program in 2020 and now works at MPE Engineering Ltd. in Lethbridge as a Civil Technologist in Training.

Wagner and her son also became Canadian citizens in April 2023, which Wagner says she is very proud of.

Wagner said, “I felt so blessed to become a Canadian citizen, and I was so happy to become a part of this beautiful society. I had tears in my eyes during the ceremony, watching my son become a Canadian citizen meant a lot to me.”

Since arriving in Lethbridge, Wagner said she has focused on making her home a safe space for relatives and friends escaping war zones in Ukraine. Her niece recently arrived in Canada from the Donetsk region, as did her friend and her son in March from Kyiv.

Wagner’s parents still reside in Ukraine in the Kremenchuk region, which was the location of a deadly Russian missile attack on a shopping mall last June. Wagner learned of the attack just after completing an interview for ASET.

Wagner said, “It is very difficult for me to deal with knowing they are in constant danger and that every day could be their last one. It is unsafe for them to leave their area because the war is all around them. I want to bring them to Canada as soon as possible and am keeping my hopes up that I will be able to do so.”

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