Paving my own Career Path

  In 1995, Jon and I had two major life events: the birth of our first of three sons, Daniel, and the introduction of Clarity at our first jewelry trade show. As we descended in the elevator towards the trade show floor, I recall being so nervous that we were serious ly considering turning around and heading back to the parking lot. But we pulled it off and officially introduced Clarity to the jewelry industry.     Jon & I at one of our first jewelry trade shows Interest in Clarity was very high. I remember in our early marketing and sales efforts, a main focus was explaining to prospects why it would be good to have a computer in their shops versus doing everything manually in books. Many of our prospects had never seen or used a computer m ouse before, and I remember explaining what they were and how they were used.     After showing Clarity at several trade shows, we had large lists of prospects. We followed up and made our first sales. I will...

I started my studies at the Pennsylvania State University in 1984. Unsure of what to major in, I remembered what Mr Zimmerman said in 8th grade and decided to study Computer Science. While there were some other women majoring in Computer Science, the vast majority were men. In retrospect (and at the risk of generalizing) my sense is that I was different than my male colleagues: whereas they tended to get very excited by new computer stores on campus and the latest hardware and processors, my passion was being a creator. Just give me the computer and a programming language, and I love to design and build fun and useful applications.  Punched Cards  The years I was at Penn State were an interesting time in the history of computing. When I was a freshman, I could see the seniors in the computer center still submitting their work using stacks of punched cards, although use of this media was phased out during my years as an undergraduate.  While there was nothing like the ...