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Future's on the phone
BY DELIA O'HARA
| The Sun-Times Company
It used to be that women were steered into certain female preserves in
the work world, like nursing, teaching and secretarial work. Though
women now have more choices, some find themselves 10 or 20 years into
a career with a distinct feeling that they would rather be doing
something else.
Whether it's answering a calling, starting a business of their own, or
simply following bliss, some women are giving up prestigious jobs and
enviable paychecks to start down a different path.
"We're finding that as women are growing in their careers and with
their families, they want more control over their work and their
lives," says Maureen Petron, director of the Women's Entrepreneurship
Initiative for the National Organization for the Self-Employed.
Having toiled their way up the ladder in the corporate world, many
women may be reluctant to say, "Oops, this isn't what I want after
all." But Sherry Saunders, spokeswoman for the Business and
Professional Women says: "Women shouldn't be forced into a certain
workplace model, only defined by dollars and the title on her door.
The measure should be, is she is using all her potential and creative
talents to do a good job?"
Women changing careers often have major-league skills that they can
use in their new lines of work. Colette Cusack certainly doesn't have
to fret about whether the bookkeeping is in order at Cece Shoes &
Accessories, her brand-new store. Until last December, she was the
associate director of finance for a subsidiary of the Joint Commission
on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations.
"About the time I turned 40, I started feeling ineffective and
unhappy," says the 45-year-old Cusack. "It wasn't the job that was
changing, it was me. I was wanting to create something of my own."
Cusack took a night course called "How to Start Your Own Business,"
but was advised that she was unlikely to find financing and abandoned
the idea. Then an acquaintance mentioned that her sister, Lisa Santos,
had started her own business, the Southport Grocery and Cafe.
"I talked to her for 45 minutes. From then on, I didn't look back,"
Cusack says. She's made mistakes, and is learning from them.
"My first big mistake was to buy a lot of colored shoes," she says.
From now on, she'll invest more heavily in black, which her customers,
it turns out, are always asking for.
"I wouldn't have wanted to do this in my 30s, when my weekends were
precious," she says. "It's a lot more time than 9 to 5. But now, it's
fun."
*****
Julie Krema never shook a sense of dissatisfaction that dogged her
through her years working in finance, as an investment broker at
Lehman Bros. on Wall Street in New York and working in commercial real
estate in Chicago, most recently at Jones Lang LaSalle. "I liked it,
but I never loved it," she says.
She even got an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago in hopes
of firing up her interest. "Temporarily, I liked situations better.
Still, I think I always wanted to have more of a people job, where I
was giving more," she says.
Krema, 35, had taught Sunday school at St. Clement's Catholic Church
on the North Side, and had been involved with an adult literacy
program. Then she got involved in helping establish an all-girls'
charter school.
"I found I was more interested in the curriculum than in finding the
facilities," she says. "I came to the conclusion that teaching was
something I wanted to do."
Krema, who was always good at math growing up in west suburban
Elmhurst, is working on a master's degree in education at DePaul
University, and is volunteering in the first-grade classrooms at
Sacred Heart Schools, 6250 N. Sheridan, until the spring, when she
will begin her student teaching there. "It's a great place, with a
well-thought-out curriculum," she says, describing her career change
as a "calling."
"My parents said, 'What are you thinking?' I have these opportunities
my mother never had," Krema says. "I was making a lot of money. Still,
other than the paycheck, I have never looked back."
*****
Linda McCarty also felt a calling. An attorney with McCullough,
Campbell & Lane, McCarty finished a divinity degree from the
University of Chicago last summer, and is looking for a job as a
Presbyterian minister.
Raised a Baptist in rural Indiana, McCarty says, "I became a lawyer
because I never wanted to be bored."
She didn't reject the law. Her decision to become a minister "has much
more to do with my faith journey and with what my purpose on the earth
is," she says.
While more men are in the ministry than women, McCarty thinks being a
woman won't hold her back as she looks for a position. After all, she
says, "It was harder to find a job as a [female] attorney when I
started out in 1998 than it is now. Change is scary, but you have to
be where your heart is."
When she finds a job, the 42-year-old McCarty expects to be working
longer hours for less pay.
"Part of being faithful is to find yourself in the middle of conflict,
not just for more money but for reconciliation and peace, to seek
justice for people who don't have a voice, and so people can love each
other and live a better life," McCarty says.
*****
Tracy Heilers was looking to add balance to her life a few years ago
when she joined the health club at the park district in Geneva, where
the Iowa native was working as a civil engineer for the city.
Her career choice goes back to high school. "I was great at math, and
a lot of people I looked up to said, 'You should be an engineer.' I
didn't put too much thought into it."
But in Geneva, the park district needed children's gymnastics
teachers. Heilers, who had been an avid gymnast as a child, began
teaching classes after work.
"I found myself waking up in the morning, counting down the minutes
until I could get out of the office and get into the gym with the
kids," she says. "It made me look at why I was an engineer."
The 32-year-old Heilers and her husband, Gary, had been trying to have
a child, and as part of that effort, she took up yoga and began trying
to eliminate stress from her life. She quit her engineering job in
1999 to teach gymnastics, but soon moved into administration at the
private Bartlett Gymnastics Center, even while continuing to teach in
Geneva. "That was more stressful than being an engineer."
Yoga provided the key, she says. "My last career choice was slowing it
all down and looking into my heart," says Heilers, whose son, Ian, was
born in January. She teaches a few classes in gymnastics and yoga for
new moms, but mostly she looks after Ian.
"The biggest thing I've learned is that everybody has to go through a
search, about their purpose in life, and what's going to bring joy
into your life," says Heilers, who lives in St. Charles.
"It's rough to be friends with the unknown," she says. "But who wants
to have her whole life laid out in front of her?"
*****
Lisa Kivirist several years ago left a glamorous job on the business
side of the Leo Burnett ad agency in Chicago to live "close to the
land."
Kivirist, 37, who grew up in Glenview, met her husband, John Ivanko,
also in account management, at Leo Burnett. They discovered many
things in common, she says, including a love of the outdoors and the
fact that they were both "more entrepreneurial than we had been
prepared for."
She says, "The shoes weren't fitting right. We saw bosses and mentors
living lives we didn't want to be in. We wanted a fresh story."
Eight years ago the two quit the agency and opened a
bed-and-breakfast, Inn Serendipity, in Browntown, Wis. In addition to
the inn, the couple now has an organic farm where they grow produce
for farmers markets, the kitchen at the inn, and most of the food
needs of their family, which now includes 2-year-old son Liam. The two
write -- their latest book is Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest
for the Good Life(New Society Publishers). Ivanko is also a
photographer.
"College grooms you for traditional career paths. You can plug in and
play that, but I've found that life is more complex than that," she
says. "Women in today's world are given either/or options -- career or
motherhood -- but there definitely is a way to blend the two."
Courtesy:
Google News
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