Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Brouwer.
Hi Carol, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
When I started college in the late 80s, I had no idea what I wanted to do. My mother worked at the College of Agriculture at NMSU and suggested I take some horticulture classes. I fell in love with plants and realized I wanted to be a landscape designer. I took classes in drafting, drawing, and lots of horticulture and earned my bachelor’s degree in horticulture. Eventually, I went on to get a Ph.D. in horticulture from Texas A&M. While I was in school at A&M in the late 90s, I took an elective class in this thing called HTML.
In the decade that followed, I worked for the Texas A&M Extension Service as a garden and horticulture educator. I was the only person in the office that knew much about building websites. I even learned CSS and some JavaScript in my spare time. I found that my early education in landscape design also applied to web design. Design principles are universal regardless of the medium you choose to work with.
By the time I met my husband, a programmer with a degree in Computer Science, Oracle database engineer, and owner of Tempora, I had 12 years of experience building websites. We now work together building websites and web applications. Our mutual appreciation of technology, agriculture, and cats has made us a winning team. Yes, we work together, and yes, we’re still married.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to bring together all of the things I love. Some of the projects I’ve enjoyed the most are designing logos and websites for wineries – old world meets agriculture meets technology. This logo for Denise Gardener Winemaking is one of my favs – the font is Mayer by the amazing sign artist David Smith. I still enjoy volunteering for the AgriLife Extension Master Gardener program class here in Texas. I enjoy teaching Landscape Design, Botany, and WaterSmart Landscaping classes.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Changing career paths can be daunting both emotionally and logistically. You must consider all the implications to your future and the people you care about. One thing I know is that education is never wasted. The skills, knowledge, and ability to learn that you gain along the way will always be invaluable to your next endeavor.
As you know, we’re big fans of Tempora. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a boutique web development firm that specializes in eCommerce and membership websites. Our philosophy is that form truly follows function. In other words, a good web design both solves the problem of providing users the information they seek and also looks great. We bring this philosophy to all of the services we offer, including website and web applications development, social media assistance, and logo design.
Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Wow. This is a difficult question, and we discuss it a lot internally. I think of myself as generally a risk-averse person probably because I can easily see what can go wrong; the reality, though, is that I believe you must take calculated risks to be successful. Always give equal weight to the pros and cons of a decision.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tempora.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/time4tempora/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/time4tempora
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolbrouwer/
Image Credits
Cristie Williams
