Skip to main content

Alumni Profile: Julie Snache

Story by Kurtis Rideout

During her final year at Laurier, Julie Snache (BA '11) was invited to participate in the development of Indigenous student services and became a founding member of the university's Indigenous Students’ Association.

"I received an email from (manager of Indigenous student services) Melissa Ireland in the fall that year," Snache recalls. "It said that the school was going to start an Indigenous Student Centre and a group of people was needed to start a student association."

Soon after, Snache attended an on-campus meeting. From there, Laurier's Indigenous Students’ Association grew.

Today, Snache runs her own web design business, Cedar & Birch Web Design, and teaches at Georgian College in Barrie.

Julie Snache
Julie Snache

"I just started teaching in January and I started my business last fall," she says. "I do lots of overflow work for agencies as a freelancer."


"I have ideas about things I would like to do in the future to give back to the community."

– Julie Snache


Snache's roots are in Rama First Nation and she grew up in Orillia. She attended Laurier based on a recommendation from a high school teacher. During her time studying religion and culture at Laurier, Snache worked as an intern at Kitchener's Anishnabeg Outreach, an organization that offers training and employment services to Indigenous community members.

After graduation from Laurier, Snache worked as a community career developer at Anishnabeg. In 2012, she returned to Orillia to be closer to family and reconnect with her roots. Two years later, she attended Georgian College to study interactive web design and development.

"Things are kind of growing," Snache says or her career. "I have ideas about things I would like to do in the future to give back to the community."

One of those ideas is creating a web application that would allow users to access an Ojibwe language dictionary.

"It's something I have wanted to do for years," she says. "An attempt to save the language."