Your college years often shape the rest of your life and certainly influence your career path. This week I asked four women to reflect on the larger lessons they took away with them.
Patrice M. Dermody, president of media and the integrated ventures group at DDB Chicago, an advertising agency, was well prepared to enter a male-dominated work force when she graduated in 1978 from Notre Dame University with a degree in American studies.
“When I was at Notre Dame, I was in the third class of females to go all four years. The ratio of men to women was about 6 to 1 so I learned how to interact with men on an intellectual level.”
With that background, it was hardly surprising when, three years ago, she called a man who had once been her mentor.
“Guess where I am?” she asked him.
He didn’t know.
“In your old office. I have your job.”
Looking back, she says she had a terrific time at college. She remembers a pivotal experience in terms of determining her career direction: A chemistry professor took her aside and told her, over a glass of sherry, “Where you really belong is business.”
“I’d never had sherry before,” she says, laughing. “Growing up on the South Side, it wasn’t something my parents kept around.”
People skills: Acquiring a knack for getting along with many types of people is something that Bevin Desmond traces back to her days at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind., where she graduated in 1988 with a degree in psychology.
Now, as vice president of the international division at Morningstar Inc., a mutual fund and stock research firm, she deals with people from all over the world.
The small class size at St. Mary’s helped groom her for that. Because there were fewer students, they were able to talk more in class and grow comfortable with hearing different points of view.
When she and her husband, who went to Notre Dame, eventually settled in Chicago, she worked in social services and he worked at Morningstar as an analyst. After meeting some of his colleagues, she joined the firm in 1993 as a recruiting director, by which point her husband had left the firm. Two years ago, she started helping the company establish a presence overseas.
She enjoys starting things from scratch and likes the fact that “the learning curve is steep; every day we are figuring something out for the first time.”
Leaps of faith: “When you’re at college, you can’t see the path clearly,” says Debra Bean, chief business planning officer of Leapnet Inc., an Internet services company. Bean graduated with bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and in fine arts from the University of Colorado in 1977. She earned a master’s in fine arts from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982.
While most people tend to look at arts degrees with a great deal of skepticism, she says, her education has served her well in the business world.
Her anthropology background helped her analyze corporate culture. And she had the ability to combine creativity with practical problem solving skills. She adds that artists and business people sometimes face the same obstacles. “You are taking an idea through a process to a finished piece of work. You learn to address the challenges that crop up after the initial inspiration.”
Fresh orders: Loret Carbone, president of Flat Top Grill, says she uses her psychology training every day.
Carbone graduated from San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science. In 1974, she got two master’s degrees in psychology from the same university. Carbone paid her own way through college and for three years was a resident assistant in a dorm.
She recalls a philosophy professor who required students to keep a journal. The habit has stuck with her, and so have the teacher’s dramatic words of motivation to students: “If you don’t have anything to say [in the journal] you might as well put a gun to your head.”
After working as a school psychologist for several years, she decided she wanted to live in a big city, wanted to see the four seasons (something she had never done in California) and wanted to be a waitress.
She moved to Chicago in 1980 and got a job at the Pump Room. “After three weeks, I knew it was for me.”
And the restaurant business wasn’t that big of a stretch. “I’m from a big Italian family,” she says. “I love to cook, I love to entertain and be the hostess.”
Eventually, she moved into management. After moving back to California to be closer to her family, Carbone returned to Chicago in September to accept the position at Flat Top Grill.
Overall, she says, “I got an awful lot out of college.”
