It's fair to say I was always searching.  Searching for an explanation to why things were the way they were, searching to understand people, searching to discover what exactly I was doing here.  Why did I feel so different from my family and everyone I grew up with?  Yet why did I strive to fit in?  

When my parents divorced at my age of 12, I started reading every self-help book on the shelves at the book store.  Needless to say, there weren't many 12 year olds in that aisle.  I read The Power of Positive Thinking, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Reading a Person like a Book, Psycho-Cybernetics, ESP.  I would visit that same aisle in the bookstore in Rockland Shopping Center in Montreal, Canada every week to see if anything new had come out.  I even read Think and Be Rich as soon as it hit the shelves in 1987.  I didn't know where this was all going but I did know it felt good and kept me out of darkness.

When I turned 19, my Finance class at McGill took us on a Day on Wall Street visit to the Salomon Brothers Trading Floor then on the 42nd floor of 7 World Trade Center.  It was love at first sight.  I saw the goal posts.  I spent the next three years applying for an internship and finally a full-time job and got repeated "thank you but no thank you" letters from the campus recruiting departments at Salomon.  I was forced to accept a job as a life insurance salesperson at the young age of 22, cold calling people to talk to them about what would happen IF...  I can't imagine that I really understood what the IF was but, I guess it made a lot of sense to sell financial security when I was brought up with none.  I was also trained to sell "Freedom 55" which was the concept of retiring at a young age of 55.  Sounded old to me then but what did I know.

After a year on the job, I found myself uninspired and unmotivated.  I met with a therapist.  In just six sessions, I quickly came to the conclusion that there was a much bigger world out there for me and it was time to make a move.  My fire was lit again!  While most days at home had been defined with going through coat pockets for change that may have been left behind, I somehow believed that I should apply to business school and I didn't need to worry about how I would pay for it until I got accepted.  So I did.  I  applied to three schools and while my eyes were set on New York City , I thought life in Ithaca would be more affordable, so I headed for Cornell.  In hind sight, all those decisions which provide some illusion of control on our destiny now seem like a little chuckle from the universe that I even thought of going anywhere else for that's where I met the love of my life whom I've been with for the past 17 years.

My application said "I am applying for a Cornell MBA so that I can study derivatives with Bob Jarrow and Peter Carr and become an Options Trader at Salomon Brothers".  Cornell probably didn't see too many 22 year olds and accepted nearly none of them but, as they also thought they were making a choice, they accepted this young, driven, determined woman into the program.  18 months later, I signed my acceptance letter into the Salomon Brothers training program.

Five years after that, at 8:30 am on September 11th, 2001, I was at my desk in 1 WTC, at a different firm, looking at the schedule for the Waters Financial Technology Conference, which was taking place on the 110th floor.  I was scheduled to go that morning at 8am but one of my colleagues asked that I attend a meeting with him at 8:30 that morning on the 25th floor.  I had agreed, and planned to go to the conference at 9:30 am instead.  As we approached the time of the meeting, it was cancelled so I sat contemplating whether to go up for the first session or still wait for 9:30.  I made a seemingly random decision to eat the breakfast I had brought from home and go later.

I didn't know at the time why I had gotten "lucky" that morning.

I spent the next 10 years of my career checking the boxes.  When I get back on the trading floor, I'll be happy.  When I have a great boss, I'll be happy.  When I run a global team, I'll be happy.  When I get promoted to Managing Director,  I'll be happy.  When I can drop $100K at Prada in one year, I'll be happy.  When I make 7-figures, I'll be happy.  I checked every one of those boxes and something was still missing.

I had been searching for meaning and purpose since roaming the self-help aisle at the bookstore when I was 12.  Yet, 25 years later,  I was still keeping who I am separate from what I do.

Serving people to help them find the clarity and confidence to bring who they are into what they do, is in fact, who I am.