Working Her Own Way After working full time for an ad agency for three years, Lindsay Lake ’04 wanted a change. Little did she know her life would end up reflecting the pages of a book she’d yet to read.

Now living in Spain, freelancing in marketing and traveling around Europe, Lake is ecstatic about her lifestyle change. Emulating her Spanish neighbors, she works from 4:30 p.m. to midnight each day, which “works out really well since life gets started late here due to the heat.”

Her clients are almost all small U.S. companies that can’t afford a full-time marketing person. Lake says she’s gotten “a good handle” on who would be open to having someone work off-site. “I think small companies are very open to it. I have seven or eight clients … I work with them on one project and it will turn into something more long-term.” She works via e-mail and telephone, and “it can be anything a typical marketing person would do,” explains Lake.

Already settled in her new life, Lake happened to read “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. “The book is basically my life in a nutshell,” she says. The advice guide walks you through changing your 40- to 60-hour workweek to one that makes room for what you really want to do — whether it’s traveling or picking up a new sport. “It’s about transforming your work into something flexible enough for you to take full advantage of other things life has to offer.”

In the 16 months she has been in Spain, Lake has traveled all over southern Spain, Lisbon, Paris and beyond. “The Spanish lifestyle is amazing and lends itself well to working highly productive and then taking off and enjoying yourself outside of work.”

Harnessing Potential In Tilonia, Rajastan in the north of India, women from underdeveloped countries are being trained through Barefoot College as solar panel engineers to set up solar power in their villages. The women, from countries that include Timbuktu, Benin and Bolivia, are all middle aged, illiterate and economically depressed. In summer 2008, North Miami Campus professor, Leilani Baumanis, traveled to Rajastan as part of her research for her second Ph.D., in international management.