Founders at Work.pdf

298 Founders at Work
major. So I was able to double major in mathematics and business administration
and also fill in a whole bunch of other classes, like computer science and
acting, that most students wouldn’t have.
In the ’70s in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, there were a number of young,
but growing, colleges: College of St. Thomas, Macalester College, the College
of St. Catherine, Augsburg College, and Hamline College. They had what was
called a five-college cooperative. They were all within a couple miles of each
other near Summit Avenue in St. Paul. You could take classes at all these colleges.
So because I wasn’t just cemented to my own college and I was sort of
given a hall pass to anything, I said, “Well, I was planning on being a math
major, but maybe I’ll do this business major thing too. And by the way, maybe
I’ll take computer science classes.” The combination of being a math and
science person and then—instead of waiting linearly and taking the business
classes, like an MBA, later—seeing how business is applied, that was a magical
thing for me.
When I went into the accounting classes in the business major and all the
guys—I was the only woman there—were sweating bullets, “How to do debits
and credits?” and I was taking set theory down the hall in my math major, I
thought, “Oh man, I could break into this business field pretty easily.” I knew
nothing about business. One of my uncles was an architect and had his own
firm, but that was it in my family. So there was no sense of how businesses got
started, and back then they didn’t teach entrepreneurial classes. Because there
was so much unknown, you felt like you were so well-equipped—sort of
Superwomanish. “I have a business major, I have a math major. I must be really
prepared.” They didn’t have a computer science major, but I took all the classes
they had. At the end, I had enough credits to graduate, but I had extra time, so
I thought, “OK, how do I get myself to be well-rounded? I’ll take some acting
classes.”
I made a real attempt to be well-rounded and totally equipped—having no
clue how ill-equipped you are as an undergraduate. You have no experiential
knowledge whatsoever. We didn’t have internships, which now even all the
undergrads have at St. Thomas. We had no international travel, no semesters
abroad. So you were really much more naïve as a student graduating in the
’70s—even with a double major and a minor and some other good stuff thrown
in. But I felt empowered.
The early ’70s was a big era of affirmative action and companies were forced
to go hire women. I was interviewed for some really interesting jobs, and one
that I thought sounded really great was this job at the Federal Reserve Bank. It
was a brand new building, built by one of I.M. Pei’s designers. The president of
that Federal Reserve Bank was a really young guy. They had all state-of-the-art
hardware, software, and furniture for the time, so it felt like, “Wow, I get to be
in this brand new hot place, the Federal Reserve Bank.” That sounds like an
oxymoron saying it now. The truth was that all these jobs they were recruiting
for affirmative action, if you weren’t really a competent young woman, you
would fail. There was a gap between skills and jobs because they had to hire you
and they had to hire you in stretch positions to get women populated. In fact, I