Never mind that e-mail and online postage have made stamps seem quaint and old-fashioned, Frances Todd Stewart is starting a postage-stamp business.

 The 51-year-old business owner is remaking her career from the inside out-inside her own company, that is.  As president of Creative Products International, a product design and development company, the mother of three is learning that she must change herself in order to change her business.

“I have had to jump into the digital age with both feet-and bring my company along with me,” says Stewart.

Not an easy task in a 30-year-old family business modeled on the lessons her father taught her—but necessary for her latest product:  postage stamps that are actual mini CD-ROMs, each with one of four documentaries about the rare and distinctive Himalayan country of Bhutan.  The CD stamps fit into exquisitely decorated self-adhesive envelopes.  When affixed to a larger envelope, the CD stamp can be used as postage.

The tiny nation, whose national credo is "Gross National Happiness," uses innovative postage stamps to support its economic development-and to preserve its pristine Himalayan environment-at the same time. Stewart’s father, Burt Kerr Todd, is believed to have been the first American ever to visit the country, back in 1951. 

 "The entire project embodies the Bhutanese spirit remember the past, embrace the present and care about the future," says Stewart. “My father fell in love with the Bhutanese when he first visited, and he held the country in his heart throughout his lifetime.”

Stewart, through many trips to Bhutan in the past 40 years, understands why.  On one of her early trips to Bhutan with her father, Stewart met the calm, friendly, self-sufficient people of this Buddhist nation and learned what her father came to love so much about the country.

Stewart’s father began making stamps for Bhutan when the country barely even had a post office. "Dad recognized early on that postage stamps need not be restricted to paper and ink," says Stewart.  He blended postage with innovation to reflect the most recent technology of the day.  In the 1960s, that was the world’s first talking stamp, a tiny vinyl disc that played Bhutan’s national anthem and told a brief narrative history of the country when played on a phonograph.

He continued throughout his lifetime to create dozens of innovative postage stamps for Bhutan.  The CD stamps are the latest in a series of postage stamp "firsts" by Bhutan since the 1960s, including the first stamps ever made from silk, plastic, steel, and other materials.

Her father’s last dream before he passed away in 2006 was to create a computer-age postage stamp for Bhutan.  Stewart is happy to make his dream a reality.

Her family’s Bhutan legacy is important to Stewart.  Stewart and her husband honeymooned in Bhutan in 1981, and so did her parents when they were married in 1954.  Her parents had to hike into the remote country from India, accompanied by guides and pack animals.  The newly married Stewarts drove into the country over a long and arduous road, also from India.  These days, the entire family flies into the country on its only airline, Druk Airways.

 “We first brought our children to Bhutan in 2005,” says Stewart. “And now that we are enjoying the third generation of friendships with the Bhutanese, we feel blessed to have a profound love and meaningful commitment to Bhutan and its people.”

The changes for Stewart are not only digital-they are personal as well.  "Bhutan reminds me to redirect my energies from life's treadmill to the things that are important to me," Stewart says.  “The Bhutanese are true to themselves, and I’m learning that from truth springs happiness.”

More information is available at these websites:  www.bhutanpostagestamps.com and www.BhutanToday.net.