Caroline is a freelance illustrator, originally from London, now happily settled in Brooklyn.

Before moving to New York Caroline spent several years working as a freelance set & costume designer for theaters in England.  Caroline’s move to NYC in 2007 coincided with a shift in her specialization from theater to illustration.  It took 2 years for Caroline to establish herself in NYC and she feels most fortunate that her professional connections have come through word of mouth. New York has been very kind and welcoming to Caroline in this sense!  After a year working full time for a new startup as a creative director, graphic designer & illustrator, Caroline ventured back out on her own as a freelancer.  The freelance lifestyle is invariably unstable but Caroline much prefers the diversity it offers, working with different clients on a vast array of projects based anywhere around the world.  Most recently Caroline collaborated with clients as far afield as Australia, Slovenia and her homeland, England!  Projects include providing illustrations for branding, window displays, clothing, promotional posters, books and more.

 Caroline’s style especially lends itself to book illustration.  Caroline just finished illustrating her first children’s book for the Slovenian author, Jana Bauer.  As well as illustrating for authors around the globe, Caroline also hopes to write and illustrate her own stories for young children. Caroline feels fortunate to be represented by a wonderful new literary agency based in England called The European Literary Agency.  She is also in the process of establishing an online shop through etsy.com, where her illustrated goods will be available to buy.  Initially Caroline will be selling cards, but eventually would love for her drawings to adorn ceramics, fabric, wallpaper and who knows!

Please feel free to visit Caroline’s website: www.carolinethaw.net where you can see a sampling of her work.

As clients of Lighthouse Financial, we have all been asked to fill out that balance sheet full of circles. You know the one, it’s the one you stick in the folder and never look at. Until one day, I decided to stop avoiding what I already knew and that was seeing in black and white where my life was out of balance.

Sometime later, I decided to take what the English call a gap year off to decompress,
travel and create more personal time. In that year, I hiked the Inka trail, met my husband, travelled to Europe twice and ventured to New Zealand. I helped establish a Neighborhood Community Organization and began to work with a local entrepreneur with her start up business. When my finances started to disappear, I knew I had to re-establish a balance between my new found personal life and my business life.

For the next couple of years, I had the opportunity to support a couple of entrepreneurs with their ventures and to work on my personal life as a wife, I felt very balanced and blessed. Then suddenly, I found myself without a job and no income during what I thought was the worst financial crisis in my lifetime. We had more bills than income and I began to panic. I quickly realized that I was getting nowhere with that attitude and I needed to get on doing what I do best, talking to people. I picked up the phone and to my surprise, the person on the other end offered me a temporary opportunity that would get me by for
the next couple of months. This led to another meeting and another opportunity that was waiting for me.

Every time I thought I didn’t have enough, there it was just enough. I am certain you all have had this same experience before but just never looked at it as proof for your own future. One wise person in my life said; we are all destined to make a certain amount of money in our lifetime. You can choose to make it quick or slow and steady so that it will support your whole life. I am here for my whole life! While it wasn’t Robert who said this to me, it might have well been as I believe Lighthouse is founded on a whole life principal otherwise they would have fired me as a client a long time ago!

Today, our country and world is facing an even tougher economic crisis and yet there are opportunities. Fred & I set out a plan to rebalance our debt to income for 2011 so that our family had more freedom and fun. Because of the bleak outlook on real estate, we took advantage of refinancing and negotiated a loan down saving us thousands of dollars. It was nothing short of a miracle and felt like we won the lottery.

While our lives continue, change is all around, you can choose to look at it from a negative viewpoint or look at it as an opportunity. These words are a reminder to myself and hopefully inspiration to you, to believe and trust in yourself, surround yourself with people that do the same and close your eyes and let go. God will only give you ONLY what you can handle.

Cybele’s background is in fine art photography. She received her BFA in Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, MO and her MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY. While in Manhattan, Cybele was represented by the Jayne Baum Gallery and had works collected into the Smithsonian and Pfizer art collections. After spending many years in New York teaching and showing art work in galleries, she and her husband moved to Middletown, NJ where they now live with their two year old daughter, Marlowe and their chipmunk obsessed dog, Bella. Since the original story, Cybele also now has a new byb son, Max. Cybele has also spent years teaching darkroom and digital photography to students ranging from middle school to college age. Most recently, she was teaching at Horace Mann School in Riverdale, NY.

While teaching and working on her art form were always some of Cybele’s goals, she dabbled in portraiture on the side. Once she and her husband, Chad, began a family of their own, she took the opportunity to focus on her portrait portfolio and begin photographing children and families. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with kids and to document permanent keepsakes for families.

Cybele’s work is natural, fun, and intimate. Her goal with each photography session is capture kids in their moment; a baby cooing while playing on the bed, a child studying waves in the ocean or a family’s laughter during hide and go seek.  Knowing from experience how quickly children grow and how short-lived these stages feel help Cybele capture the moment for her clients.  Cybele’s great strength is capturing a child doing
what they do best: being themselves.

Please take a moment and look through some images on Cybele’s website: www.cybeleschorrphotography.com

This story is about our of our most adventurous clients, Jane . Many of you may have seen some of Jane’s beautiful photographs, from her various trips, that decorate our office.

Since retiring, Jane has been fortunate enough to travel to such far flung places as China, Egypt & Jordan, Hawaii, the Galapagos Islands, Greece, Ireland, Alaska (including a side trip up to Barrow which is above the Arctic Circle), Kenya, Belize & Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and the remotest of all – Antarctica.

She has helicoptered into the Grand Canyon and gone on hot air balloon rides at the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque, over the Savannah in Kenya and the Nile at Luxor. She snorkeled, swam with dolphins, and experienced parasailing in the Florida Keys.

Jane is involved in volunteer work locally – delivering Meals on Wheels, mentoring an adolescent girl, tutoring at the local high school, and reading with 2^nd graders. Jane also had the opportunity for international work as well – helping at a Maasai elementary school in Kenya, and working on an archaeological dig in Tuscany, Italy.

Life is good.