After 18 months at IBM, she joined J.P. Morgan’s Midwest sales division, one of just a handful of rising executive women at the bank. “It was an era when women were few and far between. It was always ‘me first.’ You were always racing to be picked” ahead of the others. She remembers being handed a less-than-promising client list and sitting at her phone each day as the top boss and his second-in-command went out for lunch together. Finally, she got up the courage to invite her boss to lunch at the cramped coffee shop where she ate on her starting salary. She complained about her client list and was soon given some choice accounts, including Sears, Roebuck and Co., which set her career in motion.