Summary: 50 years, 1 husband, 2 children, 2 grandchildren, 3 post high school degrees, 2 home addresses (post college), 13 email addresses, 42 pairs of shoes, 1 medicare card, 5 careers done, 3 more careers to go.
Current career: building a business: practice and expertise in technology for cities in the 21st century. AssetStewardship.com. And another business: InterimExecutive.Solutions. And another business: a startup, a basket of technology and services to help elders live independently at home longer. That’s the current stuff.
Seems like a long jump from shoes (started an ecommerce company in 1997 selling women’s shoes) or human services (worked for the state, municipalities and as a private consultant to help develop stronger human services programs) but it’s not. Love that geeky tech stuff! I am passionate about Civic Tech, dream of writing open source code for a city digital platform and hang out at hackathons on weekends. Asset Stewardship, http://www.AssetStewardship.com. Follow me on Twitter @assetstewards.
Winding the clock backward, I left Santa Ana to go to grad school at Yale. Bad choice, the school had “issues” and they offered to pay our tuition at MIT in City Planning. I accepted. Met Ron Alex when he tried to pick me up in the Boston Commons. Guess you could say he succeeded. Worked, gave birth to two kids, tried to do independent consulting, got bored, applied again to a nearby grad school (still living in Boston). Got accepted. Graduated from Harvard Business School in 1995 (our reunions are always the same year) at the age of 47, about 20 years older than the other 989 people in the class. Loved it!
Next career: Writing. A book on the history of Santa Ana, then one on some science fiction. Or maybe that will combine to one book. Hoping Tom McNeal will give me some advice!
I now have TWO GRANDCHILDREN!
Sol is 2 and Sylvia is 1. Alas they are in Brooklyn with Byron & Victoria, 3 hours and 27 minutes away from where I sit. I raised terrific kids. Rucker will bring water to the parched world with city planning and Byron will make people healthy with MD and public health. Their dad, Ron, looks forward to meeting my SAHS classmates because he forgot to go to his reunion.
Ron is an architect and does real estate development. He is on his third year of talking about retirement. He can’t do it until he cleans out our basement. This is not imminent. While we still talk of professional projects we might do together, I suspect travelling will be the next big joint venture.
Extracurricular: Over 20 years serving on Arlington Capital Planning Committee. Very proud that after 10 years of recommending, the Town finally let me design a new Maintenance Dept. which was approved this spring. Going to theater whenever I can. Small theater, like Company One in Boston. Gym, Tai Chi and Aqua Aerobics are on the daily list with a 71% success rate.
But lately everything is diverted to the back burner while I have the incredible opportunity to be in touch with so many interesting classmates that I knew so very long ago. How often in life do you get a chance like this!
Barbara Thornton