#120: Marguerite Oestreicher (From hot shot art gallery owner to Habitat for Humanity)

Reinvent Yourself

“I started [the gallery] on a shoe string,” says Marguerite Oestreicher “A friend was an artist in an old townhouse in [New Orleans]. The front half was a gallery and so I set up shop and found artists.” Since she didn’t want to go “commercial,” she says that "the gallery supported itself but it didn’t make money.” To keep herself financially afloat she landed a job as a magazine editor, later, becoming the publisher. She had just moved all her art from her gallery to her home when Katrina hit. It was her home that flooded. Oestreicher shuttered the gallery and evacuated with her son to North Carolina where she landed a job working for a conveyor belt company. “Katrina was a reset—in thinking, in resilience, in reinvention,” she says. "No one died in my family. But seeing how people suffered. I knew I couldn’t do a corporate job. I wanted to do something to make [New Orleans] a better place.” And she did that. Today Oestreicher is Chief Advancement Officer for the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. Her key to reinvention? “Find your strengths and ask, where would these skills be good?”