Find what you're interested in and don't let anything hold you back. – Art Pollard, chocolatier
SALT LAKE CITY —What's it take to follow your passion, to have software designers become chocolatiers, or to have an architectural designer give up the career because recipes are racing in her head?
What motivates a semi-conductor engineer to devote her time instead to helping refugees, and a stay-at-home mom to develop something not just stylish and practical, but also something that provides a memory?
According to a November 2013 study conducted by CareerBuilder, about one-third of college-educated American workers age 35 and older are never employed within their degree field.
An Accenture 2014 College Graduate Employment Survey offers a confirming statistic, that only 33 percent of the 2012 and 2013 graduates are working in their chosen fields. For most, it's not a matter of choice. Here are the stories of four in Utah who did make the choice, to follow their passion.
Women of the World
Samira Harnish recalls those early years in Iraq.
"When I was in Iraq I was a victim of the culture that … gave great opportunity to my brothers but not for my sister and I," Harnish said.
She came to live in a new country, with a new language, and with a new husband. Is was an arranged marriage.
With no English to communicate with others, her feelings were locked inside. She says it was a dark and isolating time.
It was 1979 and the world was fixated on the Iran Hostage Crisis, and Harnish was often assumed to be Iranian.
She was once asked to leave the grocery store, a college class, and even the hospital.
But there were small bursts of light in her life.
"I did get a few people, very kind, to push me. To help me," Harnish said.
They showed her that she was capable.
"There have been many hardships and many doors being shut in my face," she said.
But she was herself, she worked hard and soon Harnish said she was able to overcome them.
In her early 20's and a young mother of two, she decided to go to college.
But she couldn't afford a babysitter. So with one child on her back and another strapped to her chest she went to class.
Harnish became a semi-conductor engineer. She condensed memory chips found in computers, TVs and cellphones.
"I'm not that person (that doesn't) have a voice anymore," she said, remembering the woman who left her home country years ago.
"I needed to be empowered," she said. And it resulted in a career and a financially rewarding living. But this is where the story of success begins.
When Harnish saw the refugee women in Utah, she knew what they needed too. "They are with a different background and when they come here they have one thing in common, that lack of voice," Harnish said.
Survivors, she calls them. And she wanted to help.
In 2009 Harnish began a non-profit organization. She called it Women of the World.
Her mission was to support refugee women and help them gain self-reliance.
She wanted to give them a voice in the community, to empower them financially.
She wanted to be the person she wished had been at her side when she came to the United States.
Her passion comes from her own story and watching other refugee women succeed.
"Helping them now is really simple for me," she said.
Whether it's getting these women basic cooking tools so they can make their house a home, or watching them graduate from college, or opening their own businesses.
"That's a successful story," Harnish said.
Freshly Picked
"It's hot," Susan Petersen thought to herself.
Whack.
"Is my baby screaming," she wondered.
Whack.
It's summertime. She's in her backyard. And with each blow of her hammer she sends glass flying. Each glass-less window means one aluminum frame. Once it's taken to the scrapyard, that aluminum frame means cash.
"I'm not so much creative as I am just a hustler," Petersen said, CEO of Freshly Picked.
When her youngest child, Gus, was born she was looking for a stylish moccasin that stayed on his foot.
She found nothing.
"So I started making them at my kitchen table," she said.
But her bag of scrap leather from a yard sale only went so far. She was informed at the leather store that she couldn't buy just one piece. She had to buy the entire hide. It was $200.
"We didn't have a lot of extra money, or any extra money at the time," Petersen said of her family with a husband still in school and with two young children.
But her brother's window installation company had old, extra windows.
"I took the aluminum to the scrap yard and I made $200," she said.
And Freshly Picked was born. Six years have passed and the company has continued to grow. She now has six sew shops, her product is in Nordstrom and she made an appearance on the TV show, Shark Tank.
Petersen said she's stuck to her original financial model.
"We've never taken a loan, we've never taken a line of credit," Petersen said. "If we have the cash to do it, then we'll do it."
She credits her success to her two-part passion behind the company.
"I've always wanted to provide for my family," Petersen said. "It's kind of just been a passion of mine since I was really little."
She also believes in giving her customers something more permanent than a pair of shoes.
"Behind all our product is this idea that this piece will tell a story about a time in your life," Petersen said.
"When the baby wears the moccasins, what happens is their foot ends up imprinted in the bottom of the shoe. And you're able to capture this time in your life and in your child's life that you can never get back."
Amano Artisan Chocolate
Cocoa beans are stacked a few feet high on pallets around the warehouse.
Argentina, Madagascar, Venezuela; the beans are from all over the world.
Art Pollard, president of Amano Artisan Chocolate, pours the beans into his vintage winnowing machine. The shells are removed and the beans are roasted.
It is a laborious task, but not something Pollard is unaccustomed to.
In 1994 Pollard and his partner Clark Goble started a company doing search engine technology.
"In the software world we were some of the best at what we did," he said.
But something was missing.
"It doesn't really make people happy," he said. "It just makes people unhappy when it breaks."
What makes people happy? Pollard's answer: chocolate.
The roasted beans are moved to the melanger where the weight of the stone wheels crush, roll and crush the beans some more.
It's Pollard's favorite step process.
As the wheels turn and the methodic pulsing of the gears fills the air, so does the rich smell of chocolate. On this day it has a note of banana, other days it may be citrus.
Pollard said he and Goble consider themselves "foodies."
"We just love food, and in particular, we love really, really good quality food."
Chocolate, he said, speaks to people.
"To our soul," Pollard said. "There's just this magical quality that touches who we are as individuals."
Chocolate spoke to Pollard; chocolate was his passion.
"Find what you're interested in and don't let anything hold you back," he said.
The two began researching, learning and experimenting with chocolate. They studied machinery, chemistry, and agriculture. They hoped their software clients couldn't hear the sounds of chocolate machinery churning in the background on their calls as they moved toward a change.
After the chocolate is crushed it is refined and shaped into a large blocks. Some will become baking chocolate and the rest will be melted down to a chocolate bar.
After 10 years in a refining process of their own, Amano chocolate launched in 2007.
"Everything comes down to that moment when you're actually eating the chocolate," Pollard said. "But it's a long journey to get to that spot."
Ruby Snap
Tami Steggell said she loved her career of 15 years as an architectural designer — until the day she didn't.
"If I'm going to have to do it everyday, I want to love it," she said.
Steggell had another love and knew it was time to move on.
For about seven years Steggell had been an avid cyclist. She rode hard and wanted the food she ate to be worth it.
"I started creating recipes for me that were worthy of the luxury of eating a cookie," she said.
She used fresh ingredients and unusual pairings.
"I had all these recipes burning a hole in my head," Steggell.
Soon her path was clear. She decided to open a bakery, and Ruby Snap was born.
As customers enter her shop she offers them a menu and a sample of her malted dough topped with marshmallow and salted caramel.
"It's ridiculous," she said as she stretches her hand over the counter.
"Oh, those are so good!" a customer exclaims.
Part of her passion for Ruby Snap is that wow factor.
"Just getting to see when people are like, wow this is good," she said.
With a journal for ideas always within her reach, Steggall said her true passion is in recipe development.
The ideas constantly float through Steggell's mind. They never rest, she said.
"They don't always come to fruition but sometimes they emerge much later as a better version of the original idea."
Steggell doesn't give up. You can't give up on your passion, she said.
"It's like your conscience that's always tapping on your shoulder that says hey, hey. You've got this thing to do and you should do it," she said.
A conscious, or gift, she said that would leave if left unanswered.
"I kind of feel like I would become soulless," Steggell said. "Therein lies the joy that you get to be true and authentic to you day after day after day."
Email: ebench@deseretnews.com