Liberal Smarts
CLA entrepreneurs turn their broad education into business success

BY NELLA LETIZIA

WHILE ATTENDING Washington State University in the late 1970s, Richard Duval banged out news stories on a trusty typewriter and discordant notes on a piano. He didn’t have any formal music education—he was majoring in journalism—but he had an ear for music and an inexplicable obsession to play.

“I tried to play every piano on campus. It was a four-year quest,” says Duval, a 1977 WSU graduate. He estimates he must have played between 25 and 30 pianos across the Pullman campus. “I spent a lot of freshman Saturday nights at Goldsworthy playing the piano with two fingers.” Patterning his improvisational style after jazz musician Keith Jarrett, Duval also wrote his first song while at WSU called “With You in Mind,” now a 25-year work in creation, which appears on his first CD released last year.

The other thing Duval did at WSU that set him up for his future career was take a photography class for his degree. But instead of the photojournalistic shots that captured a news event, he took landscape pictures.

Today, Duval has united these self-taught skills in PhotoTunes, his electronic greeting card company out of Bothell, Washington, that utilizes his photography accompanied by piano-based music he writes and performs. Duval launched PhotoTunes as an alternative to the hundreds of e-card sites that offer overly cute and simplistic sentiments and as the foundation for other business ventures. He is assisted by his partners and fellow WSU alums—wife Leslee Porta Duval (1978 Business Administration), sister-in-law Connie Porta (1980 Political Science), and best friend Larry Minor (1978 Business Administration).

And Duval started his company without the benefit of a business degree, though he has 22 years of experience in corporate marketing in the Puget Sound area. In fact, he credits his liberal arts education with giving him the adaptability to learn new things.

“I don’t think I’d be as adept at balancing (my creative and analytical) sides had I not received my liberal arts education at WSU,” he says. “The journalism degree was absolutely the best preparation. It teaches you to learn and how to learn forever, to grasp subjects quickly. My foundation was laid at WSU.”

Turns out a liberal arts education has set up other WSU alums like Duval for careers as entrepreneurs. Three other alumni relate their stories of success in business—and how their liberal arts degrees made that possible.

It’s Moki Time!

No middle child ever had it so good. Unique Monique, also called Moki, rises divinely at 7 a.m., bed rags in her hair and oversized watch on her wrist, the morning light streaming in through her window and shining on a farming community very like Coulee City, Washington, except it might be a little French village, because the address is 52096 Á La Country Boulevard. She has an older sister, Maddie, and a little brother, Mac; if she were any other middle child, she might find herself fighting for Sis’s attention or fighting off that of her toddler sibling.

Not Moki. Maddie has to go to school, and that leaves a day to schedule the Mokiville Talent Show for Prince Parker de Mokiville, her dog, and Queen Phoebe the Fabulous Feline, her cat. She dines with brother Mac on sweet berries, croissants, pâté and café au lait—magically transmuted from grapes, rolls, cereal and juice—for brunch. Dreams in the hayloft of singing jazz with her Mokester Band. And Moki Time flows on…

These fanciful imaginations spring from the middle child of WSU alum Corinne Tyler Isaak, who graduated in 1991 with a humanities degree and in 1992 with a secondary education degree and English endorsement. With coauthor Karen Cooper and illustrator Don Nutt, Isaak last year wrote and self-published a children’s book and accompanying CD about her daughter Monique and the virtues of small-town America. Both appealed to Nordstrom, which distributed the book and CD nationwide. Now Unique Monique—Moki Time has a Seattle publishing company and is making the rounds around Washington schools for Authors Days, where students learn creatively about writing and publishing.

In addition to being a children’s book author, Isaak taught for a few years before starting her first company, Coulee Country Kennel. But first she was Corinne Tyler, a WSU liberal arts student who on a cold January day in 1990 walked out of Avery Hall after volunteering at the tutoring center and saw “a very cute boy,” Brian Isaak. Thirteen years later, the Isaaks live in Coulee City and enjoy the farming life with children Madeline, 9, Monique, 7, Maguire, 3, and the newest addition, Marianna Corinne, born Nov. 10.

“I like to think that my liberal arts education gave me the opportunity to begin my meal of life,” she says. “My liberal arts education allowed me to begin with some educational ‘appetizers.’ The variety of business and English classes gave me exposure to two different fields of study…

“It is a perfect fit for me—English, business, and teaching are all incorporated…(in Unique Monique),” Isaak adds. “The only thing left to say is that dessert is my favorite part of my meal, so one could say the best of life is yet to come.”

Digital decorating

Many people tell Tami Peterson Lewiski they didn’t know they could decorate their homes with a computer and printer. It’s not something they would know; Lewiski invented the new interior design genre of making sophisticated home furnishings using these simple tools when she wrote the book Digital Decorating.

The Corning, New York, resident and 1981 WSU graduate
in communications has carved a niche for herself with such
projects as producing custom wallpaper borders and creating
decorative glass tiles. Her work is also capturing national
attention, drawing comparisons with the national icon for
home décor.

“This past summer a Wall Street Journal article dubbed me ‘Martha Stewart of the digital kind,’” Lewiski says. “I’ve been fortunate to show my unique work on many television programs, including ‘ABC News’ and as a frequent guest on Home and Garden Television, including ‘The Carol Duvall Show.’ Several Sunday newspapers in major cities have run features on my work, and Family Fun magazine ran projects from my book this past spring.”

Being ahead of the curve is never easy, she says, and it’s no different with Digital Decorating, published under her author byline, Tami D. Peterson. It took a crafts book publisher to understand the new market Lewiski has conceived—ironically, Martingale and Company of Woodinville, Washington, from the same state where she started on the road to designing for the digital age.

At WSU, Lewiski took classes in journalism and advertising. She was also very involved in business clubs, especially the American Advertising Federation. In her junior year, she participated on the presentation team that won the state championship for its advertising campaign and went on to compete at the national level.

Lewiski minored in business and, unknowingly, entrepreneurship. When one of her favorite business teachers learned of her early career as a model in Portland, Oregon, he encouraged her to set up off campus what was then the fi rst and only modeling school in Pullman.

“Turns out, it provided me with exactly the income I eventually needed to finish paying tuition my last semester—as the funds from my student loan fell short just that amount,” she says.

After college, Lewiski married husband Steve, a 1980 WSU graduate in business, with whom she has a son, Jamie, 7. She worked in the computer industry, including several years at Microsoft, while writing feature stories for PC Magazine. She also served as executive editor of Computer Shopper magazine and wrote the long running consumer advice column Personal Shopper. As an industry expert, Lewiski provided regular television commentary for network and cable news programs. The experience should come in handy for the next phase of Digital Decorating’s evolution: A pilot for a syndicated television show of her own is circulating.

“Whatever skills you rack up in life, however insignifi cant, usually contribute to something greater later on,” she says, “and the relationships you develop with your professors can often mean more to your professional advancement than grades or rote learning.”

Turning chili into wine

Ever try Bonair Winery’s chili mead? Gail and Shirley Puryear start with their own sweet mead—made from pure fireweed honey—and add one chili pepper before filling the wine bottle. This quirky release says volumes about the Puryears’ spice, innovativeness, and irreverence in the heart of Yakima Valley’s wine country.

Gail and Shirley have owned and operated Bonair Winery since 1985 outside Zillah, Washington. Bonair, named after the road they live on, produces roughly 6,000 cases annually of chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and specialty blends. The Puryears also cultivate their robust sense of humor because, as Gail claims on the winery’s Web site, “…we try not to take ourselves too seriously (‘If we weren’t all crazy, we would go insane.’ —J. Buffett).” He credits that sense of humor to E.M. Forester’s Aspects of the Novel.

In reality, the Puryears began the road to winemaking and stand-up long before at WSU, when the two Spanish majors with Russian minors used to write notes to each other in Spanish using the Cyrillic alphabet. Gail also broke a natural law when he made the Bryan Hall clock tower strike 13 at midnight on October 31, 1967. (Ask him how he got through three locked doors.) But that story didn’t make the Daily Neverread—only the mysterious fire on the Holland Library lawn that same bewitching night.

The couple needed that kind of humor—they graduated in 1968 in the middle of the Vietnam War. Gail got a teaching assistantship at the University of Arizona for his master’s in Spanish but had to give it up when “my Uncle Sam wanted some cannon fodder in ‘Nam,” he says. He got a deferment by taking a full-time, sixth grade teaching job in Whittier, California. Shirley became a social worker for Los Angeles County.

“In retrospect, I think Vietnam would have been easier,” Gail says now. “Being poor wasn’t really fun, and after pursuing various ideas, [such as] engineering, law, and media production (I was accepted into USC’s master’s program in media, but I dropped out when they said most of their graduates became librarians), I finally just went for the bucks in school administration. So I have an M.A. in school administration from the University of East LA (actually, California State University at Los Angeles).”

He fell in love with winemaking in the Napa Valley in 1970 on a trip with his old WSU roommate, a doctoral candidate in food science at WSU at the time and one of the people who worked with Charles Nagel on early wine trials in Washington state. Gail and Shirley decided to move to a place where wine grapes are grown. A school administrator opening in the Toppenish School District provided the opportunity they needed. After 24 years in public education, Gail quit to pursue winemaking full time.

Their liberal arts education served them well in the Puryears’ new role of winemakers. In the 1960s, WSU liberal arts majors were required to finish 16 hours of laboratory science. Gail chose quantitative analysis, used in 99 percent of all winery lab work, and introduction to microbiology, which covers the rest of fermentation science. Shirley chose botany.

“These courses and the ability to speak Spanish are all you need to run a winery in the Yakima Valley,” he says. Shirley agrees and encourages current students to learn another language and live in a foreign country for at least a year. “You’ll understand so much more about the world and about yourself, ” she says.