I’m a copywriter, a project manager, a journalist, a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, a couchsurfer, a B-movie actress and so much more.
Welcoming change, yet securely wrapped in my original Midwest roots, I’m on my third country of residence. I studied advertising in Illinois, was a Rotary Ambassador in the UK and tackled corporate communications out east at Honeywell, before dotcomming (positively sublime while it lasted) at ModernBride in Denver.
After the two-hour Cherry Creek lunches ended in 2001, I started my own marketing communications business. Over the next nine months, I attended a truly obscene number of networking events. But it was all worth it. I turned a profit the next year, taking on clients like Qwest, Dex, Chipotle and Boston Market, just as I began considering all those adult things like the importance of healthcare and sunscreen. It was slippery yuppie slope from there and the next few years of life were decorated with book club meetings, sushi dinners, NPR, volunteering, graduate degree work and half-marathons.
Four years later, somehow receiving less satisfaction from hair highlights and Banana Republic purchases than I anticipated, we rented our house and joined the Peace Corps in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was like learning to fly. During my twenty-seven month service, I worked with a craft gallery helping to create a sustainable income for socially disadvantaged artisans and I helped a young Habitat for Humanity get off the ground. I also became a freelance journalist, started a book club and acted in a few very bad sci-fi channel movies. There wasn’t a mud hut in site, but sifting through post-communist dust, suspicion and fatalism proved an enormous challenge. After finishing our service, we traveled overland through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Northern Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. As we couchsurfed and hitchhiked, I authored articles for easyJet, did voice-overs for military e-learning modules, rewrote a Web site for a Palestinian-supporting NGO in Beirut and taught computer classes to Ugandan orphans.
After two years, eleven months and 14 days away, we returned in August of 2008. Humbled and changed by what I’ve seen, but glowing with appreciation for this beautiful country (I never thought I’d be so happy to see a Chili’s!) I’m ready to ride and write again.
