Skip to main content

JULIA BALFOUR

I was introduced to Julia Balfour in 2010, by our mutual friend Carol Adams. We were all doing start-ups, trying to build a business from zero. I was sharing desk space with my accountant in Old Lyme, Julia was doing the same in Old Saybrook, the birthplace of JULIA BALFOUR, LLC and Carol was grinding coffee beans when not tending the goats in Lyme. 


I met Julia for the first time that summer, explaining that I needed a graphic arts package, company name, logo, tagline, website, communications program, stationery, and business cards. And, of course, I needed it yesterday at a price I could afford, if not pro-bono. 


Julia didn’t flinch, she went to work. She would email me at midnight with a “new idea” and we’d text back and forth tweaking the “look and feel” of my new company, Alpaca United. 


She designed a trade-show exhibit and followed through on the myriad details required to secure space in an international show, ITMA, Barcelona, Spain, 2011.


Julia was not only a brilliant graphic artist, RISD and Parsons, she was the full package, businesswoman, wife, mother, and friend. This girl was an iron fist in a velvet glove, strong inside, charming, and engaging on the outside. 


We’ll miss you, my dear friend, rest in peace, you’ve earned it.











 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SILENCE IS APPROVAL~Jewish Meme

How often do we learn something awful, clam up, and ignore it, hoping it will go away.  It never does, it just gets worse and our silence becomes its enabler.  Life is like that, we don't want to get involved. We have enough to worry about and ignorance, after all, is bliss. Wrong, ignorance is acceptance. The easy analogy is governance. We sit in a management meeting or a board of directors where we become aware of something nefarious and keep silent for fear of being disloyal.  To speak up takes courage and courage has consequences. When a whistleblower comes forward they are vilified, they become the victim of power and power corrupts. We've seen this in Washington for years, management teams being selected for their weakness rather than their strength. Weakness breeds indecision and silence, strength breeds courage. A new administration always starts with a ray of hope that the management team, aka the cabinet, will be outspoken and advise and consent with courage, not sile

AROUND THE WORLD IN 23 YEARS~AZERBAIJAN

Sheki, Azerbaijan  This trip was a study in contrasts, the glamour, and luxury of the capital Baku and its Caspian Sea oil deposits and the third world poverty of its rural countryside and medieval agriculture. I was there to improve the latter, but what I found was surprising. In the end, it's not about oil or vegetables, it's about the human spirit. I took this photo of a 5th generation farmer and his 7th generation grandson after his wife had served us a modest lunch of homegrown vegetables and pork, the meat sliced razor-thin to stretch their budget after entertaining western visitors. I've never had a better meal, before or since.   Forget Baku and their moguls, the real Azeri's live on the farms, that's where I discovered how wonderful life can be, fewer conveniences and more love. This man was the perfect host, he offered us what he had, no shyness, no apologies just knowing that what he had would be more than enough. My life in the developing world changed m

IT MUST BE SUNDAY

" Life is like a river, if you cannot let go of the past, it will drag you down the stream.” ―Amit Ray I've Been Thinking... A few months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about life when he said to me: “Maria, if you want something new, you are going to have to first get rid of the old. It’s the only way to make room.” Damn, I thought. Ain’t that the truth? One of my big New Year’s resolutions for 2020 was to clear out the old in every area of my life. I had made a promise to myself that this would be the year I would take a hard look at how I was living my life: my beliefs, my attachments, and all my stuff. I started sorting through things from my office, things from my time as First Lady of California, things from my parents, things from my kids (do yourself a favor and do not save all of your kids’ school things like I did), and so many other things that had found their way into storage when life got the best of me. In fact, I was already in the thick of shredding, di