Moral Compass

<p>I was raised with the understanding that I would never have to work outside the home. Looking beautiful and keeping a nice house seemed to be the only requirements for my life. Then my mother died when I was 10 and my father's alcoholism raged. The decline in our circumstances was slow at first then sudden. I ended up living with other families and couch-surfing for years. I observed the harsh realities of not being able to support oneself. I grew up in a deteriorating factory town where some of my girlfriends became strippers to earn money. My first boyfriend joined the mob. Clinical depression forced me to face and then change my reality.</p><p>Financial institutions were exclusively male-dominated at that time. As a consequence of being raised by an alcoholic father I had a predilection for alcoholic men. I ended up at Fidelity Investments where I was the only financial professional without a college education. I became a stock analyst. And I found love!</p><p>The changes in finance and society have been enormous since the 1950s. The thinking and behavior of the past were bizarre. I lived and worked in the middle of it. I had just enough moral judgment pragmatism and luck to beat the odds.</p>