November 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Costa Rica: Tourism: Small Business: Charlotte Observer: Several years ago, Sandra Feldman started Costa Rica Tours Ltd., which arranges travel packages to a country where she served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s
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November 1, 2004: Headlines: COS - Costa Rica: Tourism: Small Business: Charlotte Observer: Several years ago, Sandra Feldman started Costa Rica Tours Ltd., which arranges travel packages to a country where she served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s
Several years ago, Sandra Feldman started Costa Rica Tours Ltd., which arranges travel packages to a country where she served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s
Several years ago, Sandra Feldman started Costa Rica Tours Ltd., which arranges travel packages to a country where she served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s
'SHIFT' WORK: Ready for new career?
Here's how to be a success if circumstances force you into a new field
MIKE DRUMMOND
Staff Writer
[Excerpt]
Sandra Feldman was a globetrotting owner of an international consulting firm in Washington when life's drama directed her to change character.
Her husband landed a job at the U.S. Customs office in Charlotte in the early 1990s. Feldman dutifully played trailing spouse.
Far from D.C.'s who-you-know network, her business of training managers about equal opportunity law and helping aid agencies evaluate international development projects slowed.
As a woman entrepreneur in a button-down banking town, "I felt marooned," she said. So she did what some ousted political incumbents will be doing come Wednesday -- she reinvented herself.
A growing number of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs and are itching to change careers. Factors include rising health care costs, meager raises and increased hours. Layoffs, off-shoring of blue- and white-collar jobs and corporate scandals haven't helped.
Those seeking to shift fields can use Feldman, 60, as an example. She followed the script that experts say works. Several years ago, she started Costa Rica Tours Ltd., which arranges travel packages to a country where she served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s.
She did her homework, which included a fact-finding mission to Costa Rica for market information. She networked with contacts she maintained in Central America over the years and nurtured new ones, including those at the Charlotte chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She paired her desire to help people with identifying a viable market need. And she didn't let making money rule her decision.
"I wanted to do something that was fun, that was creative, where I could be my own boss," she says. She could have pursued a financial services job in the country's second-largest banking center. "But I'm not a conformist type of person," she says. "I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer. I'm not going to (approach a local bank) and say, `Please, please let me come into your bureaucracy.' "
When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.
Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security. |
| Schwarzenegger praises PC at Convention Governor Schwarzenegger praised the Peace Corps at the Republican National Convention: "We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach village children." Schwarzenegger has previously acknowledged his debt to his father-in-law, Peace Corps Founding Director Sargent Shriver, for teaching him "the joy of public service" and Arnold is encouraging volunteerism by creating California Service Corps and tapping his wife, Maria Shriver, to lead it. Leave your comments and who can come up with the best Current Events Funny? |
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Story Source: Charlotte Observer
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Costa Rica; Tourism; Small Business
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