When I was a girl, I thought I would become an architect. An interior designer. A sports reporter. A physio-therapist. Even a coroner (during theQuincy TV show era).
Never in a million years, did I expect to end up working in computers (though, looking back, she did have a thing for The Twilight Zone).
After graduating university with a journalism degree, I got a job as an advertising copywriter—only to lose it a couple of years later due to the economic recession of the early 1990s.
Determined to keep writing, I picked up random writing jobs (translation: writing about rakes and power tools for Canadian Tire store flyers and catalogs), until I applied for a full-time posting as a technology publicist/writer. It didn’t matter that I knew nothing about technology. I could learn (I needed the money). And learn I did, working on agency accounts over the years, like Dell, Lexmark, NEC and AT&T.
After getting married and having two amazing children, I established her own boutique agency, working on other accounts like Compaq, Microsoft, Palm and Symantec.
I also returned to my journalistic roots and began writing about lifestyle issues, architecture and design for magazines and newspapers, including Chatelaine, Style at Home, Canadian House & Home and The Globe and Mail.
Inspired to marry my two worlds in 2004, I pitched one of her magazine editors on a feature article that would educate mainstream women on technology (complete with a fun, sexy Cosmo-like quiz).
Rejected and dismayed, I turned the article concept into a novel, now known as Opportunity Rings, to empower women to do anything, even if that means installing a wireless network.
I still write about women and technology, architecture and design from my home office – while juggling meal preparation, helping my kids with homework and getting them to/from school, hockey, baseball, swimming and karate – with my smartphone and laptop permanently attached to my hip.
