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"I've always been an outdoors person," says Rob Nodine. "I put myself through college working for the Bureau of Land Management as a wildland firefighter."
As the City of Seattle’s lead light rail engineer, Katherine Claeys has seen the project through three years of environmental impact planning and four years of construction.
Bryan LaComa, a designer at the sustainable landscaping company In Harmony, creates dozens of residential landscape plans each year.
"I never thought my silly Internet addictions would actually be useful," says freelance writer and author Ariel Meadow Stallings. As a marketing manager on the software giant's staffing team, the Seattleite spends much of her time publishing "Microspotting" , a blog profiling some of Microsoft's most notable employees
Between 1994 and 2005, Laura Michalek owned and operated four vintage furniture shops in Seattle. A self-professed "junker," she'd put 60,000 miles on her car every year just trolling for antique treasure at estate sales and auctions. Somewhere along the way, she became sold on the idea of grabbing a microphone and working as a full-time auctioneer herself.
If you commute to work, chances are you know Adam Gehrke. During the past decade, his morning and afternoon traffic reports have dominated the airwaves on multiple radio stations around the Puget Sound.
For chocoholic Jean Thompson, life is sweet. As co-owner and CEO of Seattle Chocolates, the 15-year-old company she and her husband first invested in eight years ago and became sole owners of in 2005, she has the delectable task of developing, marketing and packaging wholesale lines of truffles and premium chocolates.
Volcanoes, shipwrecks, seismic faults – for Joanna O'Neill, it's all in a day's work. As a marine geologist for Fugro Seafloor Surveys in downtown Seattle, she spends part of the year on land and part of the year at sea, creating topographic maps of the ocean floor.
Certified Financial Planner Geleg Kyarsip has spent the past two decades helping people from all walks of life work toward their financial and retirement goals. In March of 2000, he founded Kyarsip Financial Advisors in downtown Seattle, a financial planning firm that charges clients by the hour rather than getting paid through commissions.
When Patrick Angus studied art history at Western Washington University, he never imagined he'd wind up flexing his creative muscle in upscale retail. Today, as creative director of Mario's in downtown Seattle, he wears many hats. He manages the visual display of merchandise. He orchestrates marketing campaigns. He works with architects on remodeling plans. And he dreams up and helps his staff construct the whimsical window displays in the company's Seattle and Portland stores.
Jana Scopis fell in love with event planning while she was in college. As a hotel management major at Central Washington University, she scooped up an internship in the catering department of a historic hotel in Texas, where she helped plan swanky weddings and plush parties. She spent the next decade working her way up the hotel-catering food chain, and in March of 2007, she became the director of catering and convention services at the W Seattle>, a position that involves selling, schmoozing, keeping dozens of balls in the air and planning some of Seattle's most lavish parties.
Like many English majors, Laura Vanderpool found gainful employment working in corporate communications. During her six-year tenure in the marketing division of a Big Five accounting firm, the University of Washington alum cut her teeth writing "dry proposals and reports." When a corporate restructuring prompted her to jump ship in 2000, she landed in public relations, first at a doomed dot-com, then at socially progressive Parsons Public Relations in Seattle. In 2004 she became senior account manager of the nine-person, three-canine PR team, a job that entails acting as the agency's lead writer and helping environmentally conscious clients spread the word about their products and services.
Roberta Browne grew up on what she refers to as "a steady diet of Looney Tunes cartoons and 'The Wonderful World of Disney.'" All her spare time in high school was spent drawing cartoon characters, and all her notebooks were covered with doodles. After getting a commercial illustration degree at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, she tried her hand at freelance illustration for two years – and wound up earning the bulk of her income by waitressing and bartending. Feeling off her game, she returned to school for animation and, upon graduating, landed her first job as an animator. A decade later, in May of 2007, Browne joined Bungie Studios in Kirkland, where she works as a lead animator, a job that involves everything from 3-D software to brainstorming sessions to pratfalls.
Robert Margoshes spent his twenties performing in rock bands. But an opportunity to work as a roadie for a headlining act made him realize he preferred working behind the scenes to playing on stage. After spending more than a decade on the road as a lighting technician for what he calls "giant corporate rock shows," he put down roots in Seattle. Today he works as technical director of the historic Moore Theatre, ensuring that the lighting, sound and special effects of each performance go off without a hitch.
Like many animal-loving kids, Jamie Pflughoeft grew up with dogs, cats, and birds for pets and dreamed of working with animals someday. In college, she studied animal behavior while working as a pet sitter and dog walker on the side. Today, as top dog of Cowbelly Pet Photography, she snaps the mugs of hundreds of critters a year, turning many of them into brightly colored, digitally enhanced artwork that she's dubbed Decopaw.
Robert Holland caught the baking bug at an early age. As a fresh-faced teen, he landed a job making bread by hand at the family-run Sanchioli Brothers Bakery in Pittsburgh, Pa., an 85-year-old cornerstone of the city's Little Italy district. Today he's head baker at the wholesale location of Seattle's Grand Central Bakery, where he manages the production of thousands of artisan breads each day, overseeing a staff of two dozen who shape each loaf by hand.
Sports buff Ryan Madayag grew up watching Mariners and Seahawks games at the Kingdome. As a teen, he played running back for the Inglemoor High School Vikings, where he broke the school's rushing record. In 2003, the University of Washington communications graduate scored even bigger, landing an internship in the Seattle Seahawks' Fan Development Department.
Edwina Uehara was initially what she calls "a reluctant administrator." She didn't come to the University of Washington School of Social Work 17 years ago in search of a deanship; she came to be a professor, a path she pursued with "great gusto," earning the university's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1996.
When Seattle created its Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) unit in 2004, Brian Stampfl wasted no time applying for one of the highly coveted positions. With a resume that included service as a police officer for roughly a decade, a police-academy instructor for almost two years and a detective in Seattle's sexual assault and child abuse unit for three years, he had little trouble nabbing the job. Now, as one of the city's six full-time CSI detectives, he spends his weeks combing violent crime scenes for evidence and documenting that evidence for court.
After 15 years of working in shipping and receiving for Costco, Ronel Jones decided it was time he changed gears. So in 2002, this Harley-Davidson enthusiast took a job selling motorcycles at Downtown Harley-Davidson in Tukwila, blending his passion with a paycheck.
Doug Hand worked in salmon processing, telecommunications, exercise equipment and book publishing before he alit on a career that really ignited his interest: He works as a career firefighter for the city of Renton, a position he's held for the past year and a half.
Sidira Sisich hadn't planned to work as a retail buyer. But a job managing a small boutique during college sold her on the idea. So in 2001, after graduation, she began to work for Macy's, where she's currently a buyer for juniors.
Michele Scoleri has managed to spin her love of music into a two-decade career. Since 2000, this former New York talent agent has been producing events such as Bumbershoot and the temporarily on-hiatus Summer Nights Concert Series for One Reel , Seattle's arts and event-production powerhouse.
Rolf Hokansson's horticultural career didn't blossom until later in life. After 30 years working as a social-service administrator for the state's Department of Social and Health Services, he decided he wanted to work outdoors with plants.
While he's researched and written his fair share of scientific papers, conservationist Bret Sellers realized early in his career that he'd have more impact on the biological community—and the endangered animal species he so revered—by working at a zoo.
Although Deborah Jacobs loved to read as a child, she took a page from her mother, who told her, "Get your head out of that book and go ride your bike outside." Jacobs knew at an early age that she wanted to serve her local community.
Travel enthusiast Chrissy Hyde has found a way to get the world to come to her. For the past year, she’s worked as deputy director of the International Visitor Program at the World Affairs Council, a U.S. State Department program designed to foster greater cross-cultural understanding
Former ski instructor and river rafting guide Tami St. Paul has built a career on her love of the outdoors. For the past six and a half years, she's worked as an apprenticeship coordinator for the Operating Engineers Regional Training Program of Western and Central Washington.
Guyer makes a living making vacant Seattle homes more inviting to potential buyers by adding furniture and decorative flourishes she finds on the sale racks.
Therese Littleton, director of curatorial affairs, Science Fiction Museum A unique background and a lifelong love for science fiction landed Therese Littleton one of the most coveted museum jobs available.
Lisa Rongren started her career as a restaurant server at Seattle's Lampreia. She's now the wine director/sommelier of Ray's Boathouse, helping the restaurant's patrons choose from their vast selection of wines.
For more than 10 years, Alex Draper has had a hand in making some of the world's most innovative snowboards. As snowboarding director for K2 Sports, Draper has the enviable job of leading the team that decides what snow tools everyone will be coveting next winter.
For 30 years, Rick Steves has been one of America's foremost authorities on traveling to Europe. But, as the Edmonds-based Steves describes it, trying to make a career out of travel writing is anything but a vacation.
Running a major radio station is a lot of fun, and a lot of work. Shawn Stewart, program director for Seattle's KMTT-FM (103.7) "The Mountain," describes how she landed her job in radio and how music lovers can get their feet in the door at a station.
A love for cinema led to a job making commercials for StraightEIGHT films founder Matthew J. Clark. And being a cameraman is just one of the job's prerequisites.
Communication skills, patience and a love for video gaming are essential for James Sakshaug's job as a product tester for Nintendo.
Besides a love for baseball, this perk-filled job requires marketing skills, people skills and some late hours.
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