Working hard, playing hard: professionals find fulfillment pursuing their avocations.

• Author: West, Gail
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Corporate 100

Would you recognize your doctor behind that bass thumping out bluegrass music? Or your attorney in mud boots with binoculars around her neck following the winged and feathered creatures? How about your human resources executive blowing steadily into a double-reed instrument as notes of an etude soothe your ears? Maybe your landscape architect under the welding hood attaching things together that only a mad scientist would relate to each other? These are real scenarios for Alaska professionals at play.

What does a work week for one of them look like? For many, it's long, focused and demanding--meetings, chasing business opportunities, dealing with employee issues, and always facing loads of papers that need attention. To leave work behind and either ease or refocus the mind onto another entire avenue is both restful and stimulating, according to Mary Tesch, senior vice president of administration for the Tatitlek Corp., an Alaska Native village corporation with a nationwide operation and hundreds of employees.

A member of the corporation's executive management team, Tesch is responsible for human resources, records management, information technology, administration and safety. She also helps to train new managers and corporate leaders.

"Our executive management team works a lot of long hours during the week," Tesch says. "We also travel a lot working with Tatitlek projects all over the Lower 48."

Tesch says she's also very involved with the Human Resources Certification Institute, which provides certification and accreditation to industry professionals, and is a past president of the Anchorage Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management.

Even though Tesch spends long hours with her job, she says Tatitlek stresses work-life balance--so she also spends time playing oboe with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra.

Prior to working with Tatitlek, Tesch spent 20 years with Chugach Electric Association as the vice president of human resources, actively involved with employee relations and union negotiations. All during that time, her off-work passion was music.

"My undergraduate degree was in music performance," Tesch says, but her first job was in HR at Children's Hospital in Denver. After that, she went on to obtain her master's degree in human resources management. Playing music, though, "is like a whole different side of a person that has nothing to do with work, and it gives me a great deal of personal satisfaction. It puts a balance in...