‘Look out world, here I come!’: ’80 alum Linda Day felt confident at graduation that she would succeed in business – and she did
In 2005, Linda Day (Cooper) surprised her husband, Steve, with a trip to Durango for his 50th birthday. After graduating from Fort Lewis College in 1980 (Linda) and 1978 (Steve), the Days had never been back to Durango together…and having met their sophomore year, Linda figured there was no better way to celebrate Steve’s milestone birthday than to return to the place where the two met. “When we landed, we didn’t even check into the hotel—we drove straight to campus,” recalls Linda. “Durango still feels like home to us in a lot of ways. Fort Lewis was a special place to start our relationship.” A Littleton native, Linda chose Fort Lewis because it was far enough from home she could spread her wings, but had the added benefit of in-state tuition. “I remember immediately feeling that I was part of this tight community,” says Linda, who adds that she was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of her education as well. “I learned to think in a completely different way. Because of the liberal arts aspect, I took classes I never would have thought to take.” One of those classes was a business course, after which Linda decided to change her major from elementary education to business. After graduating, Linda stayed in Durango for five years, enjoying life and working at the Strater Hotel, but it wasn’t until her and Steve’s first child was born in 1985 that she settled happily into her most important job: motherhood. In 1987, after short stints in Tennessee and Maryland, the couple moved to Portland, and when her daughters were in elementary school, Linda began working part-time at a Red Lion Inn. In 1996, Linda became an office manager for a plumbing company, handling all of its day-to-day operations and bookkeeping duties. “I ended up being so efficient that I got the job down to about five hours a week,” says Linda. Word spread of her abilities and before long, Linda had a handful of Portland-area clients that kept her busy for five hours a day all the way through her daughters’ high school years. When her youngest daughter headed off to college in 2005, Linda decided to grow her business, ignoring the fact that she was attempting to do so in the worst economic period in U.S. history. Today, Linda has a successful consulting business of 15 clients. Her pitch? “I save companies money,” Linda says. “I streamline processes and replace a full-time person’s salary. These days, what company doesn’t need that?” Linda says it was more than an education, but a solid foundation that set her up to succeed. “I remember leaving Fort Lewis very confident that I could do well in just about any position with such a well-rounded business degree,” says Linda. “The atmosphere there is so positive, and the interaction with professors is so personal that I think students can’t help but walk out the door saying, ‘Look out world, here I come.’” Even after living in Portland for 22 years, Linda says that Durango will forever hold a special place in her heart. “When I think back on my Fort Lewis experience, the two words that come to mind are ‘family’ and ‘community,’” says Linda. “Portland is similar to Colorado in that way, but there is nowhere in the world like Durango.” |
