Puppy unleashes new career

By Michelle Hiskey

For the AJC

During long years of college that taught Taz Jiwa to design structures, the bad economy dismantled her hopes of finding a job in the architecture field.

So after earning her diploma from Southern Polytechnic State University, in her hometown of Marietta, she got something else she had long sought: a canine companion.

A puppy, she was sure, would help carry her through post-college uncertainties, just as one had when she was a child and her parents divorced.

Her new dog, named Willow, helped her do more than that. The puppy led her to re-envision what her hands could design and produce. The one-of-a-kind pet accessories business she began in turn helped reinvent the life of an abandoned animal.

“Willow was once an orphan roaming the streets,” Jiwa, now 25, said of her canine business partner. “Now she is the mascot of her own store. ... It was all created because of her.”

A ‘will to create’

Architecture seemed like the perfect fit for Jiwa, a graduate of Lassiter High School, when she entered college on a HOPE scholarship.

Born Tazneem Jiwa to a dad with roots in India and a mom from Middle Georgia, she was a kid who could draw anything to scale, and turn an Erector Set into a battery-powered helicopter. “The will to create,” Sabra Cohen says in characterizing her daughter.

Architecture school’s demands “are incredibly time-intensive, and problem solving in design isn’t a linear process,” said professor Richard Cole, Jiwa’s thesis adviser. “Sometimes, just when you think you’ve got a challenge under control, another problem is revealed and it’s literally ‘back to the drawing board.’

“Taz has this certain character of remaining very calm, collected and humorous while she is working like crazy to meet deadlines.”

In the year before her graduation in May 2009, Georgia lost 5,000 jobs in the fields of architecture, engineering and related services, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“In Taz’s years at Southern Poly, the architecture market [went] from average to very troubled,” Cole said.

As a result, many graduates have gone into website design, government work, even pizza delivery.

“We joked that we went through five years of hell and all we got was a piece of paper,” Jiwa said. “When one friend got a job at an architecture firm’s front desk, we celebrated that someone at last had made it into the building.”

Puppy breeds purpose

With her job prospects dim, Jiwa knew a dog would bring comfort. She had learned that as a child of 8, the day her parents asked her how she would feel if they lived apart.

“I felt like I was traded around,” she said. “Within a month, they told me I’d get a puppy.”

That pup was a beagle-basset mix found at the Cobb County animal shelter. Their bond lasted 13 years.

“Some kids have imaginary friends,” Jiwa said. “I had Brittany.”

This time around, Jiwa picked out a husky-shepherd mix at the Atlanta Humane Society. The willow is Jiwa’s favorite tree, with tenacious roots and healing properties, and the new name signified the dog’s new life.

“The expression on her face and eyes made me feel a connection,” Jiwa said. “She was just a little bitty thing that somehow gave me huge ideas.”

Pets help people in transition but can suffer if the life change doesn’t work out, said Miguel Abi-hassan, the Atlanta Humane Society’s director of animal welfare initiatives and outreach.

“Considering that cats and dogs help avoid depression and heart disease, it seems like common sense that you’d see more people in a rough time wanting to have a pet close to them,” he said. “The downside of someone seeking a life transition is that the animal may pay the brunt of the outcome if the person moves, loses employment or can’t put food on the table.”

With no job nibbles despite sending out “tons of résumés,” Jiwa visited St. Simons Island with her fiancé over the July 4 holiday. She shopped for a patriotic-themed pet collar for Willow, but found nothing that looked fun and wouldn’t break.

So she fashioned the collar she envisioned herself, drawing and making a model just as she had in architecture school. “In college, everything we did was designed by us,” Jiwa said. “Our selves came through in everything we did.”

When she and Willow went to the dog park, people would comment on the collar’s bright, bold colors and sturdy construction. A new business was about to be unleashed.

A growing business

With startup funds provided by her mom, Jiwa began creating a whole line of dog products: collars, leashes, pillows, plush toys, bows and key fobs.

Within four months, a website — thelittlewillow.com — was up and running, with Willow’s silhouette as its logo and her story as company history.

Jiwa’s reinvention fit the family profile, her dad said.

“My parents lost everything in East Africa and moved to Canada completely broke,” said Nasir Jiwa, who was born in Uganda. “My dad had run his business all his life and at that point decided to go work in a factory because of his lack of education. It’s not really being resourceful like Taz, but he was resilient and did what he had to do. Taz is that way... [she] will survive.”

Selling crafts on the Internet, through sites such as etsy.com, and at festivals is generally only a modest moneymaker. But Jiwa’s sales have steadily climbed, with orders coming from as far as Australia. She’s expanding her offerings, adding baby products recently, and would like to design fabric and possibly furniture.

But she’s also trying not to burn out.

“I love to make everything, but sometimes I have to sit back. Just because I like making everything doesn’t mean I should.”

An unexpected life

Her obsession with detail — super-strong clasps, Japanese fabrics, tiny charms shaped like dog bones — has cost her more than dollars.

Her time and passion for the Little Willow, along with other factors, led to her engagement breaking off.

“I wasn’t the person I was in [college],” she said. “After being in that bubble, I’ve learned a lot about myself already. I’ve had to come to terms that [the marriage] I thought I wanted wasn’t what I really wanted.”

As she builds her business, Jiwa has a room and studio at her father’s home in Powder Springs. She still hopes to break into architecture someday, but plans to keep her business going as well. She stays involved in what she trained for by working part-time with a construction contractor.

It’s not the career she thought she’d have. But with her dog at her side, she’s building an unexpected life of her own design.

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These articles profile people who have “reinvented” themselves in some way, exploring how they did it and what they have learned in the process. 


Have a suggestion of someone to profile for The Reinvented Life? Contact writer Michelle Hiskey at michelle.hiskey@gmail.com.

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Doggie crafts, music

Taz Jiwa’s The Little Willow is among numerous vendors that will take part in Boxerstock 2010, a dog-themed crafts and music festival benefiting Atlanta Boxer Rescue.

$5-$10. Noon to 7 p.m. Oct. 24. Jim Miller Park, 2245 Callaway Road, Marietta. www.boxerstock.org.