Eva Niewiadomski never liked her office cubicle.  She started her career in the corporate world as a CPA but was constantly redecorating her surroundings to improve her mood.  She even transformed an office hallway into a community innovation space to help foster office creativity.  When she went back to do her MBA in Marketing, her career took a dramatic turn in a creative direction.  After being laid off, she founded Catalyst Ranch, a creative meeting and event space that impacts how people work and think.

How do you describe your work? “Catalyst Ranch is a creative meeting and event space.  Instead of going to your basic boring hotel room, we provide a boutique conference experience.  We’re in a little building from the 1880s and you come up off the elevators and it’s like, this is different. We have a lot of color, ethnic artwork and it’s to make you think differently and use your imagination and apply this to work objectives.”

What three adjectives best describe you? “Creative.  Energetic.  Optimistic.”

Cats, dogs, birds … describe your pets? “I don’t have any. I used to have two cats.”

Favorite season? “Spring.  I really like it because it’s new growth, new energy, new possibilities. It feels like the whole attitude changes once spring starts, it’s just like a new hope.”

Name a city you’d love to visit.  Why? “I have this list of places I want to go.  I’d actually love to go back to Kraków in Poland.  It’s just this beautiful little medieval city that somehow survived WWII.  There is such an intimacy and antiquity to it.  I love architecture.  There is that whole visual interest that you don’t get in modern cities.  Every building is unique and it has hundreds of churches.”

What’s the best thing about being single? “Freedom to do whatever you want and explore things.  I think you think differently when you’re not attached to someone and have to take their wishes into consideration.”

Describe your ideal “Girls’ Night Out.” “Usually it’s some kind of art exhibit followed by tea in a little café and hanging out and talking.”

What’s the nicest thing a friend (or friends) have done for you? “I had this great outpouring of support and visits when I suddenly had surgery 4 years ago now.  I was laid up at my mom and dad’s and it was a really serious surgery and a near death experience, because they didn’t do it right the first time.  It was kind of an amazing connection with people.  People came to visit, sent flowers, brought shopping bags full of DVDs, and VCRs, books and mailed me things.  But it was really just coming to visit and calling.”

What do you do for “Eva” time? “I do creative sewing projects.  I’ll buy vintage pieces or used clothes and alter them.  I will add things and change them and have a fun time just experimenting and see what might happen with it.  I make jewelry but lately it’s been sewing.”

What’s the best advice you ever received? “I’ve had a lot of good advice in my life.  It was actually from an accountant when I was first starting my business and the guy said, `What you need to do is do a forecast for what you think is the reasonable scenario and then run the worst case scenario.  Then wrap your head around whether you can live with that.  Can you live with losing that kind of money?  Because if you can’t, don’t even start, otherwise it will cripple you.’  I don’t have that partner to help if things go wrong.  It’s not like my parents have money although they were willing to give me every penny of savings.”

What quality do you admire most in a man? “It’s a double one. Integrity and a sense of humor.  If you can’t laugh, you’re going to have some miserable times together.”

What quality do you admire most in a woman? “Empathy.  Women friends are different then men friends for me.  What usually holds friendships together is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and be totally with you and focused on you and then you do the same for them.”

Who are your real life heroes? “I don’t point to specific people.  I’m going to say my mom and dad because they’ve gone through so many hard things but they’ve always managed to live their lives with integrity and surround themselves with love and not dwell on what they don’t have.”

What is your guilty pleasure? “Ice cream.”

What is your biggest fear?  “Being left homeless.  When you’re kind of on your own and running your own business  – when things go really wrong, a lot of women think about that.”

If you could change one thing in your past, what would it be? “I wouldn’t have gone for the CPA.  I would have changed direction at that point.  I felt like a lot of my years were spent in accounting/finance, things I didn’t really like.  I’m a real practical person and I paid for my own schooling.  You’re interviewing and you realize this is not my cup of tea, too late too late.  I felt like I had to finish it.  It’s lead me to what I’m doing, which is what I’d love, but I wish I hadn’t spent that many years doing it.”

Other than your own talents, what talent would you most like to have? “I’d love to play the piano, amazingly.  I learned when I was too old so I putzed around but I’ll never be of that calibre.  I wish I had some kind of musical talent.  I enjoy music so much I would love to be able to play some musical instrument well.”

What is your motto? Or what words do you live by? “I don’t know if I have a motto. It’s more of a philosophy.  It’s hard to summarize but I guess I try to live to by my values and live optimistically because I think if you have a natural energy and enthusiasm, it impacts the people around and your surroundings and how you see the world and I like to provide a positive impact.  It’s amazing the things that come out of that.  If you naturally have enthusiasm it gets people energized too.  If you came into my office, you’d have a hard time being depressed here.  There is lots of color and interesting things to look at.”