W UP FRONT
Changing
Course Three women describe life-changing career choices By COURTNEY BURKHOLDER
Photography LIZ GARZA WILLIAMS
L
ife is full of choices. Each day we are faced with opportunities to choose that can forever change the course of our lives. The women within these pages made difficult choices. They sacrificed highpaying salaries, powerful careers, security, homes, familiar surroundings and life-as-they-knew-it in pursuit of a dream. It could have gone either way, but for these women, the options and the sacrifices were really no choice at all. PAIGE BOSSHARDT For Paige Bosshardt, taking a ride on the wild side is just part of everyday life. Paige and her husband, Fred, are proud owners of Caliente Harley-Davidson in San Antonio. Though Harley-Davidson has been a dream come true for the couple, Paige admits it wasn’t always on her radar. Born and raised in Kentucky, she once dreamed of being a news anchor for a major television network. Armed with a BA in marketing and a minor in public relations and radio-TV-film, Paige seemed destined to achieve her goals when she landed a job with KSAT-TV. “I was a writer for the assignment desk during the day of Bob Salter and Deborah Daniels,” she recalls. But life has a way of throwing curves on the highway of life, and after meeting and marrying Fred, Paige found herself in Houston and pursuing other interests. After a three-year stint with the Marriott Corporation, where she was a sales manager at the age of 25, she was recruited by an architectural firm, Vitetta Group, where she began to truly make a name for herself. “I was like a lobbyist for them,” she recalls. “I would meet with hospital executives or superintendents of schools and school boards and try to get them to hire our firm to build their new hospital or school. It was pure sales, and I loved it!” For 11 years, Paige lived and breathed Vitetta. “I loved meeting people and traveling. I traveled every week. I met some really important people like Nelson Wolff and other city politicians. It was a ball! Paige Bosshardt previously worked for KSAT-TV, the Marriott Corporation and the Vitetta Group architectural firm before starting over with her husband as an owner of a Harley-Davidson dealership.
I gave it 150 percent. I considered my paycheck a gift,” she says. She worked her way up to senior associate and was on the verge of becoming a partner when the road of life threw another curve her way. A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity for Fred would take
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