When she was in her 40s, Joan Payden became the first woman partner at Scudder, Stevens and Clark, a prestigious investment firm that was acquired by Zurich Group, a Swiss insurance giant, for $1.7 billion in 1997. The promotion was an honor for Payden, a true trailblazer in her field. But she later realized it should’ve happened much sooner.
The company’s leadership at the time voted once a year on who would make partner. “I found out an interesting thing that I was not elected on the first ballot. I was elected on the fifth ballot and I guess the reason was that I didn’t play golf,” Payden told students of Notre Dame’s Mendoza Business Program during a 2011 talk. “They held their annual meetings at a very large, prestigious golf course and they, of course, wouldn’t let women in, so I sat on the porch,” she explained.