Not your average 9 to 5 - individuals with unusual jobs from gossip columnist to industrial hygienist - Career Profiles

Black Enterprise, Feb, 1997 by Caroline V. Clarke

These individuals have found professional and personal fulfillment in jobs most people only dream about

WHEN IT COMES TO CARVING OUT A career, African Americans have never had the luxury of floating around for years in an attempt to find themselves. And yet, knowing what you truly want and love to do is crucial to finding a place in the working world that brings you real fulfillment.

These days especially, with stiffer-than-ever competition and steeper-than-ever students loans to repay, the search for a career that's perfectly in synch with your talents, skills and--if you're really lucky--dreams is often checked by the need to snag steady paycheck you can get.

But there are still those who are determined enough, crafty enough or just plain lucky enough to find that just-right vocation. Here are four individuals with unique careers that suit them to a tee and afford them the lifestyles they want. In forging a career, what more could you hope for?

Robb Armstrong, Syndicated Cartoonist

Robb Armstrong has an enviable life, and he knows it. At 34, he is married to his college sweetheart, has an adorable three-year-old daughter, a comfortable home and the career he has dreamed of--and striven toward--since childhood.

Armstrong is the creator of JumpStart, a comic strip that appears seven days a week in about 250 newspapers nationwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago SUH Times, New York Daily News and, Armstrong's hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is now an author as well, with three books of a five-book contract with HarperCollins already under his belt.

The youngest of five children raised in Philly by a devoted and supportive mother, Armstrong began drawing cartoons as a preschooler. What he may have lacked in drawing ability as a child, he more than made up for in enthusiasm and confidence. "My mother really thought I had extraordinary ability," he says, laughing. "I did not."

His mother's steadfast belief in his talents sustained him, even after she died during his freshman year at Syracuse University. Armstrong majored in advertising design, but spent much of his time as art director of the college's newspaper, the Daily Orange, which also ran his first strip, Hector. Featuring a black college student with heavy attitude, Hector was a campus hit that Armstrong was sure would take off in the real world.

After graduation, Armstrong started pitching Hector to syndicates that he found listed in a trade book, while working days as an $18,000-a year art director at an ad agency. He thrived in his day job, moving from agency to agency, gaining in experience, industry acclaim and income. Meanwhile, Hector met with nothing but rejection. But Armstrong persisted.

"It was tough, but my wife kept telling me, `You have a gift. Don't give up,'" he recalls. He didn't give up but he did change his strategy. "It finally hit me to get off of Hector, who was clearly not going to be the next Garfield, and find work as a cartoonist."

Armstrong began drawing cartoons on commission, for $100 here, $50 there. He also developed a new strip about two policemen, one black, one white. Then came a breakthrough. In 1988, United Feature Syndicate took an interest in his cops strip and offered him a development contract. For $2,500, he would work on the strip exclusively with United Feature, giving them the right of first refusal once the strip was fully fleshed out.

Infusing the characters with more of his own real-life experiences proved the key to Armstrong's success.

Unlike Hector, his new characters' speech is rarely peppered with slang. Nor do these characters make a habit of attacking race-based issues head-on--something he has been criticized for by some black readers. However, their lives do regularly amplify the uniquely black experience, often in subtle and unpredictable ways.

For those who wish JumpStart was a bit more in-your-face, Armstrong shrugs, and responds: "It's painful to be misunderstood, but it's less important for me to be understood than to work at understanding others. Doing that is the only way I can portray my characters in a real way."

By all accounts, Armstrong's efforts are paying off big. JumpStart has gone from syndication in about 40 papers in 1989, (each paying between $10 and $100 a week, depending on their circulation) to its current 250 newspapers. Armstrong now commands six figures for his strip, up from $30,000 in the early days. But it wasn't until last year, when he inked a book deal with HarperCollins for another "six figures" that he finally quit his day job as an art director. A year ago, JumpStart: A Love Story was published. His third book, an illustrated children's story called Drew and the Homeboy Question (the second in a series of children's books), will arrive in bookstores later this month. But Armstrong still has plenty of fresh ideas for JumpStart. The strip is now being shopped around for television possibilities, and Armstrong uses its popularity as a platform for speaking and teaching engagements.