F E A T U R E
  (4   QPFV / _
sg Spme people are lucky and eam a living doing work
ii hey love. Others are lucky and live exactly where they
. want to live. Not everyone gets to do both. UK grads Alan
. Hawse and his wife, Dr. Jill Robertson Hawse, know they can
t ‘ count themselves among those luckiest people. The couple left
j l central Kentucky at different times in the early ’90s for employ-
Q s ment in California, but they returned to work in the Bluegrass they
· both love in October 1996 when a fortunate set of circumstances
. played out.
* Today, Alan Hawse, a 1990 UK electrical engineering graduate, is
_ the director of the Lexington operation of Cypress Semiconductor
· ` Corporation, a Silicon Valley company whose headquarters is in San
_ Jose, Calif. His wife, Dr. Jill Hawse, graduated from the UK College
‘_ of Pharmacy in 1992 and received her Doctor of
        Pharmacy degree from UK in 1993. She had
Q; been employed as a pharmacist at Cardinal Hill Hospital in Lex-
5.* ington between 1996 and early 2001, but for the last three cars
      f      she has been a stay—at—home mom for the couple’s 3-year—d]ld
Q°          daughter, Anna. She expects to return to her professional work,
· , y _I at least on a part-time basis at first, in the very near future now
_ that her daughter is no longer an infant.
Being able to live in central Kentucky and work in Lexington wasn’t in the cards
3 for Alan and Jill as they were graduating from UK. The not-yet-married couple, who
met while contributing to the Kentucky Kernel- he as a photographer, she as a
4 writer and copyeditor — were temporarily separated after he was the first to gradu-
_ ate from UK and went to the Georgia Institute of Technology to obtain his master`s
degree in electrical engineering. He was recruited by Cypress Semiconductor Corpo-
A ration while he was attending Georgia Tech and he subsequently moved to the San
  Jose, Calif., area upon graduation in 1991 to work for Cypress in what is generally
J called ‘Silicon Valley.’ The couple married in 1992, but Jill stayed in Lexington until
_. she completed her doctoral degree in 1993. She then joined him in California.
  During the time the couple spent in the Golden State, they established themselves
‘ in their respective professions. Jill worked for Santa Clara County Mental Health as a
, clinical pharmacist and Alan was involved in writing software to make semiconductor
jx . chips. Semiconductor chips are used in electronics such as computers and cell phones
,   to control electrical current.
  · "Let me tell you about the Valley,” Alan said. "In the valley, it doesn’t matter who
  — you are, it doesn’t matter who your daddy is, it doesn’t matter where you are from,
 ·. what matters is your brain. That`sjust the way the place is."
 ’ Alan used an analogy to further describe the mindset in the Valley. "lt`s like living
 ~. in Florence during the Renaissance. It is the heart of the economy that’s driving the
 ` ¤ world right now."
_;  , Q But as much as he liked being a part of that situation, family was, and is, very im-
 ` l f portant to him and his wife. They both have family roots in Kentucky — Alan is a na-
‘ j ii tive of Lexington, and Jill grew up in Georgetown — and Kentucky was ever—present
  Q; on their minds. When they felt they were really serious about returning to the Blue-
    grass area, Alan investigated job opportunities in Kentucky. And that`s when their
j  §; fortunate set of circumstances began to play out.
  KENTUCKY Aieuivmi I l