Persona

Hoppenrath, Mechtild

Born and raised in Germany, Mechtild Hoppenrath spent her formative years in Europe. She began her Canadian career in magazine journalism writing for a variety of national consumer publications, including regular columns in The Financial Post Magazine, Homemaker’s and The Globe and Mail’s ROB Magazine. With her husband, Charles Oberdorf, she was been a principal of The Oberdorf Partnership for more than 30 years, the partners providing editorial and corporate communication services, ranging from editorial writing to communications analysis and the development and implementation of strategic communications plans. Building on her educational background -- the German equivalents of an MA in Education and a double-major BA in French Literature and Fibre Art & Technology -- Mechtild Hoppenrath specialized in the fields of arts and culture, travel and lifestyle. As a public relations consultant she worked for German companies and government representations in Canada, on projects for University of Toronto institutes, Canadian not-for-profit and charitable institutions and for clients in retail and other private enterprise. She concluded her work in magazine journalism after seven years as editor of St. Michael’s, the alumni magazine of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. Fluent in English, French and German, she was a long-time bilingual judge for Canada’s Kenneth R. Wilson Awards for business and professional publications and, jointly with
her partner Charles Oberdorf, has won a number of writing awards herself, including the Lowell Thomas Award for Best Guidebook to North America, juried by the University of Missouri’s Department of Journalism. In her retirement she has resumed an art project her husband and she had embarked on
prior to his prolonged illness and eventual death in 2011. This venture involves the research and documentation of an Oberdorf family collection of mid-19th century water colour and ink images by American naïve painter JWM Chamberlain, whose artworks
reflect the social and political scene of the day in the United States.

[Toronto, March 2019 M, Hoppenrath]