Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Ro Laren
3. She Has Multiple Ties To Star Trek: Voyager
The groundwork for Star Trek: Voyager was laid in The Next Generation, specifically in the introduction of the Maquis. The return of Ro Laren in Preemptive Strike initially set up the character of Chakotay. Ro speaks about her instructor at the Academy, a lieutenant commander, who left Starfleet to go and fight for the Maquis.
This was the genesis of Chakotay. Over the years, this has fluctuated in terms of canon. For a while, it was on the official biography for Ro on StarTrek.com, though this has since been removed. As it doesn't really affect either character in the long-run, we are happy to leave that particular story in place.
Another, unproduced, script for Star Trek: Voyager would have revealed that Ro was in the Academy with none other than Tom Paris, though as this never even went into pre-production, perhaps it's fair to leave that one in the headcanon pile. Still, it is nice to think that this one secondary character from The Next Generation had, in some form, so many ties to Voyager itself.