Reinventing Yourself: The Ultimate Balancing Act | Forbes
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 at 5:00PM Balancing Act
Helen Jonsen, 12.30.08, 05:00 PM EST
Meet successful people who have relaunched their lives because of a challenging change in fortune.
With hundreds of thousands being laid off across America, people in all walks of life are struggling to figure out what to do next. How will they pay the mortgage and feed the family? How will they get the personal fulfillment that comes only from being gainfully employed?
At such a tough time, it can only help to look at the lives and choices of people who have been there before, who have reinvented themselves in the face of personal life crises. Here are three of them. They discuss their work on Forbes.com video.
Sigrid Olsen
Sigrid Olsen was a textile designer whose wonderful color combinations and casual clothing designs caught the eye of executives at a growing Liz Claiborne Inc. (nyse: LIZ - news - people ) in the 1990s. The Massachusetts-based artist found herself caught up in a corporate world of mass-produced clothing, and under Claiborne she opened a string of mall-based stores that made her a big-name designer.
In January 2008 the parent company changed course. It dropped or sold several lines of clothing and closed down the 54 Sigrid Olsen stores. Sigrid's name was no longer on the door or the label, yet she wasn't allowed to compete with Liz Claiborne until 2010.
A few years earlier she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and undergone a double mastectomy. A hearty dose of dealing with her mortality and the loss of her business left her grappling with the question of what was most important to her. What was she to do with her time and talent?
She decided to pour her energies into a gallery she had opened in Rocky Neck, Mass., in 2005. There she sells handmade textile designs and is beginning to expand into other arts and explore one of the things she loves most: the way art touches people's lives.
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