102 CLEARING THE HURDLES: WOMEN BUILDING HIGH-GROWTH BUSINESSES
Overcoming the Hurdle
Katherine (Kay) Hammer was 34 years old and the mother
of two children when she decided to reinvent herself as an
entrepreneur in 1980. At the time, Hammer had a BA in
English and a Ph.D in linguistics. She was an associate
professor in linguistics at Washington State University
(WSU), but after her husband, a literature professor, left
her and their children to pursue acting in New York, she
decided that the rolling wheat fields would not deliver the
gold or the sparkle in her life. As a single parent, her salary
as an academic seemed to be barely enough to sustain her
family. She decided to leave WSU, recalling, “I felt like I
was either going to get tenure at Washington ...