...Jackie Grubb was a teacher for eleven years before taking the giant step toward starting her own business. In the late 1970s, when Jackie left the teaching profession, she decide to combine her work experience and computer knowledge to bridge the gap between the classroom and the business setting. Grubb says that because personal computers were not in wide use at the time, she gained a competitive edge, and started Plum Suite Solutions, her Kenmore Square based business.

Grubb says that the people management skills she developed as a teacher were transferable to her new career. "it doesn't matter if you have a room of thirty children or thirty adults, you must learn to read people."



Nathan Cobb, Globe Staff

...Across the Charles River in Kenmore Square, however, Jackie Grubb looks as if she's flying the Concorde. Sitting next to a window eleven stories above the pavement, this former high school economics teacher, widow, and mother of two grown children is a full-time consultant who helps both businesses and home users sort out their computer lives. And she's wired for the job: a pair of desktop computers, a laptop computer, a monitor, a printer, a scanner, a label printer, a zip drive, and so forth. When she leaves her two-bedroom apartment, Grubb slips her laptop into a bag with a phone and beeper. Sometimes, she says, she sets up shop at the food court in the Prudential Center shopping mall: "I call myself the electronic bag lady."



by Robin Lawson

Technology not only permits many of us to work from home, it even allows us to work away from home--virtually location free. When Jackie Grubb of Plum Suite Solutions decided she'd had enough of New England winters, she took off for two months in San Francisco without leaving her business behind.

First, she needed the right tools, starting with a new laptop computer. "To be away from the main office"--her Boston apartment--"I needed a pretty powerful machine". Because her business provides user support for Microsoft products, she runs three versions of Microsoft Office plus lots of other software. The new laptop includes a fax modem and a CD ROM drive, necessary for installing software and using Microsoft Technet, a subscription service to Microsoft technical files.

Working remotely caused barely a blip in her business, and she even picked up a Boston client during her sojourn...


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