With a successful business under her belt, Cathryn Griffith, Diploma ’08, is exploring a passion for photography.

When Cathryn Griffith graduated from high school, she didn’t go straight to college. “My dad died when I was 12, and there just wasn’t enough money,” she recalls. Instead, she worked as a legal secretary, got married, and had a daughter.

Then her husband died, leaving her with a small child and in charge of an industrial real estate development business. “I had no background in real estate development, and there were no other women in the field at the time,” says Griffith. “But I developed my own style and made some good decisions, and the business has gone well.”

Now that the business is running smoothly and her daughter is grown, Griffith is taking some time for her own interests. In the Studio Diploma program, she’s looking at the world through a photographer’s lens and refining her artistic vision.

She’s exhibiting across the world, too. When she visited Havana several years ago, she began a photographic project about the city’s architecture. The project has since been exhibited in Havana, Rio, and Berlin, and Griffith is producing a book on the project.

“I didn’t plan the project out like this,” says Griffith. “In the Studio Diploma Program I’ve learned a variety of new skills, and I came intuitively to a place where I could identify a project in which I could bring all the various threads together.”