“The doors are opening wider. Yesterday IBM named its first female president, Virginia Rometty,” said Wall Street trailblazer Muriel Siebert at the Oct. 27, 2011, Claire Mason Women of Distinction Lecture. “Now there are 16 female CEOs in the Fortune 500, but we women still have a way to go.”
“Mickey” Siebert has earned the right to comment on the progress of women in business, especially on Wall Street. A native of Cleveland, she came to New York City in the 1960s “with $50 and a Studebaker.” She started her career as a $65-per-week research trainee. During the early years, in the search of pay and recognition equal to her male peers, she became a partner at several firms before breaking out on her own.
In 1967 Siebert became the first woman to buy a seat and become a member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). That same year, she founded Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., the brokerage firm she still helms as president and CEO.
Siebert’s career took an unexpected turn 10 years later. In 1977, during a savings and loan crisis, New York State Governor Hugh Carey asked her to become the state’s first woman superintendent of banks. “I called myself ‘SOB,’” she laughed. As superintendent, she had oversight of all of the banks in the state, regulating about $500 billion. Not one bank failed during her tenure, despite failures nationwide.
Siebert described her acceptance of the banking appointment as an “obligation.” She explained: “You don’t do everything for money in this world. When you have success, you also have obligations. . . . I felt I had done a job of importance.”
During Siebert’s tenure as banking superintendent, she saw the wide-scale results of the average American’s lack of basic financial knowledge. Those deficiencies focused her later philanthropic efforts. She employed a team to develop and distribute a financial literacy program for high schoolers. It’s now part of the curriculum in several states and in more than 100 schools in New York City. “It’s my soul,” she said.
Siebert is the third guest to be welcomed by the Claire Mason Women of Distinction Lecture Series. Mrs. Mason inaugurated the series in 2008 as her tribute to the female students of Baruch College. Distinguished guests are chosen from the fields of public service, the arts, the media, science, and business.
With this series, Mrs. Mason also honors her graduating class of 1940, the first class of women readmitted to Baruch after its time as a male-only college.
Mrs. Mason and her late husband, Eli (also a graduate of the class of 1940), are longtime friends of the College.
—Diane Harrigan