Kathi L. Higley took business courses while in high school and shortly after graduation took more secretarial classes, including data entry training, at her local Occupational Industrialization Center (OIC). She earned a BFA from Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, and later became the assistant secretary to the Head Librarian at the Yale University’s Law School Library, where she further honed her secretarial and computer skills, and first learned to work in a team environment. Kathi’s family history has instilled in her compassion and empathy for people with disabilities as her father, a long-time Type II Diabetic, became disabled and unemployed as the result of the loss of his left leg to the disease (and he later died from diabetic complications), and Kathi’s mother, also a Type II diabetic, presently lives in a local nursing home due to a stroke that has left her a wheelchair user and almost speechless for several years.
