Turning Point

By Lucy M. Pritchett Since childhood Jasmine Ivy has had the heart of an entrepreneur. “My mom was an artist, and her friends would come over, and I would try and sell them one of her pieces. ‘Would you like to buy this for $5?’ Of course they always said yes, and then my mom would buy it back from them.” Jasmine, who has a 16-year background in business marketing and sales, has been a reporter, worked for a publishing house, a hospitality furniture company, a jeweler, and for various CEOs in Silicon Valley. “But [...]

By Lucy M. Pritchett Sometimes, with a little nudge, a good idea turns into a great idea.    After working as a stylist for 10 years in an open floor salon, Jasma Kinard felt the time had come to, as she says, “step beyond the chair” and open her own business. That was the good idea. The great idea came when Jasma looked at a small salon space for rent in the historic Heyburn Building at Fourth and Broadway and the manager showed her a much larger suite of offices that had housed a medical [...]

By Lucy M. Pritchett Julie Collings discovered that being a school nurse involves much more than taking temperatures and dispensing bandages. Julie began her nursing career as a staff nurse working in transitional care with Norton Hospital and then went on to become an outpatient surgery pre-op nurse. That was when Julie’s mother, who works in student services for the New Albany Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation, suggested that she become a substitute school nurse. Julie jumped at the chance. “I was a single mom and was hoping to get my foot in the door [...]

By Lucy M. Pritchett A promise that Anitra Durand Allen made to herself in college got lost in the ensuing years of her engineering career. Fortunately, a gentle reminder from her husband brought her to her turning point. Her promise? “I would pursue my engineering career until I was 35, and then I would stop and raise a family,” Anitra says. “At the time I was asked, ‘You don't want to do anything with your life? Why would you waste your gifts?’ I was good at math and science and heading toward my engineering degree [...]

By Lucy M. Pritchett Nina Rodahaffer’s Turning Point came when her desire to care for others led her to a nursing career and, a surprise to her, an entrepreneurial adventure. Her aha moment came over a long weekend when she was caring for her grandmother who had a medical condition that needed daily attention. Nina already had a degree in communication from the University of Louisville and was working as a manager in the restaurant industry, but those four days spent with her grandmother cemented in her mind that she wanted to go into nursing. [...]