Innovative Mom
Three women discover a new sense of balance
after starting their own home-based businesses

by Stacey McArthur
photos by Stephen W. Hill

from Finding Her Niche
If you ask Patti Hammerle's kids how she spends her day, they'll tell you that she just sits at a computer and occasionally drives to the post office.

It started when she quit her job after her son was born. "That was the last thing I ever thought I'd do," the Brownsburg woman says. "While I was pregnant, it just hit me that I couldn't send him to daycare. It must have been a maternal instinct or it was watching others scramble from work to daycare to soccer. Something just clicked in me and I thought, I don't want to do that."

She and her husband, John, had just purchased a new house and their life wasn't geared for one income. However, they decided they'd try it for six months. Those six months have turned into nine years.

Shortly after her oldest son, Matthew, was born, Hammerle started teaching computer classes at Brownsburg Public Library. "I was in and out of the library all of the time with him. I saw a sign saying they needed teachers. I had the qualifications and thought, I can do that. But they wanted somebody with manuals."

The library didn't own any computer manuals for the three-hour courses they wanted taught. Hammerle offered to create the manuals from her own teaching experience. She had previously prepared computer-training materials while working as a financial analyst for the Wabash Valley Power Association.

The library and students loved her easy-to-follow manuals. The training programs were such a success at Brownsburg that Hammerle started offering them to other venues such as Plainfield-Guilford Township Public Library and Hendricks College Network.

Read the rest of this story and others like it in December's Indianapolis Woman Magazine.