It Takes a Community

Lately my friends and I have been talk­ing about how peo­ple suc­ceed, won­der­ing why some are more suc­cess­ful than oth­ers despite com­pa­ra­ble intel­lec­tual advan­tages or innate tal­ents. Most of us have read Mal­colm Gladwell’s Out­liers, and we’ve been com­par­ing his case stud­ies to our per­sonal expe­ri­ence and pon­der­ing the impli­ca­tions.

Our Own Stories, And Belated Thanks

We’re been telling sto­ries about how and when we got our lucky break, describ­ing the peo­ple or events that were trans­for­ma­tive in our lives. There’s a com­mon thread to these sto­ries: a hand­ful of peo­ple who made a huge dif­fer­ence at a key moment in our lives. (What goes unsaid in these sto­ries is that we were all lucky enough to grow up in homes that val­ued edu­ca­tion and hard work, with par­ents who stayed involved and nudged or prod­ded us along the way.)

At some point in our sto­ries we also acknowl­edge, with cha­grin, that we’ve failed to reach out and say thanks to those early teach­ers and men­tors for their piv­otal con­tri­bu­tions when we were grow­ing up.

So here are my long over­due thanks to some key peo­ple at the early for­ma­tive stages of my life. (And yes, of course, my par­ents are included but not described in this list.)

I tell these sto­ries not to brag, but to rein­force one of the core mes­sages from Out­liers, that all highly suc­cess­ful peo­ple have ben­e­fited from “a com­mu­nity around them that pre­pared them prop­erly for the world.” Here’s my com­mu­nity of peo­ple who made a big dif­fer­ence.

Miss Scopoletti

My high school French teacher. A Ful­bright scholar and a demand­ing teacher who pushed her stu­dents to work hard, think crit­i­cally, express our­selves clearly in a for­eign lan­guage, and learn to appre­ci­ate other people’s cul­tural ori­gins and frames of ref­er­ence.

Thanks to her teach­ings and the high stan­dards she set, col­lege was a breeze. She was so demand­ing that most kids dropped her class after their first year, leav­ing me with only 4 and then 2 other fel­low stu­dents in my last 2 classes with her.

Thanks in large part to Miss Scopo­letti, I was able to pass the entrance exam to the Sor­bonne while on an exchange pro­gram from Mount Holyoke. Pass­ing the entrance exam to the Sor­bonne is very chal­leng­ing for Amer­i­can pub­lic high school grad­u­ates who have never lived in France or gone through for­eign lan­guage immer­sion pro­grams. Most Amer­i­cans who get accepted there have a French par­ent or have lived awhile in France.

The expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in another coun­try and attend­ing a top-notch French uni­ver­sity so far from home taught me that the norms and men­tal mod­els I’d grown up with in New Eng­land were not the only – or even nec­es­sar­ily the best — alter­na­tive. I had to cast aside my provin­cial­ism.

Mr. LaPore

Early on my high school guid­ance coun­selor rec­og­nized that Adrienne’s par­ents and mine would aim low, steer­ing us toward “afford­able col­leges” that were not chal­leng­ing enough. (Adri­enne and I would later grad­u­ate as the top 2 stu­dents from our high school.) Mr. LaPore wanted us to get into col­lege under early admis­sions pro­grams, so we’d get first crack at good schol­ar­ships.

Mr. LaPore was so con­vinced we could do bet­ter than our par­ents’ aspi­ra­tions that he drove us around New Eng­land on sev­eral col­lege cam­pus tours, get­ting us excused from school for that pur­pose. He ensured we were intro­duced to Admis­sions Offi­cers at key Ivy League and other lead­ing pri­vate col­leges.

Mr. LaPore rec­og­nized that our par­ents did not under­stand the secrets of get­ting finan­cial aid, and were unable to take time away from work to drive us to col­lege cam­puses for admis­sion tours. Mr. LaPore also pushed us to attend recruit­ing lunches and teas hosted by local alums of lead­ing schools and uni­ver­si­ties in New Eng­land.

Thanks to his inter­ven­tion, both Adri­enne and I were able to attend Ivy League schools on full schol­ar­ships, instead of the state teach­ers’ col­leges our par­ents had in mind. She went to Brown, I went to Mount Holyoke. She became a doc­tor.

Robert McCray

A suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur, busi­ness inno­va­tor and an early angel investor in New Eng­land, Robert McCray “rel­ished the chance to bet on peo­ple.” He was the CEO of a small, for­ward-think­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cern that employed me dur­ing sum­mer vaca­tions and col­lege breaks. His com­pany pro­vided my first job, my first lucky break, and a key source of income to sup­ple­ment my schol­ar­ship over a 4‑year period. (And my first real-world expo­sure to com­put­ers in busi­ness.)

When I was 16, I rode my bike to Worces­ter Con­trols to apply for a sum­mer job at my father’s urg­ing. (I didn’t want to flip ham­burg­ers.) The head of HR saw me ride up to the front door on my bike, was charmed by the nov­elty of it, admin­is­tered an IQ and apti­tude test, and hired me on the spot as a clerk for the sum­mer. (He also advised that it was not good prac­tice to ride a bike to work in a mini-skirt, given a fac­tory envi­ron­ment that was largely all-male.)

He later intro­duced me to the CEO, Bob McCray. Between them, they ensured I always had a job when on break from col­lege, with a vari­ety of job expe­ri­ences. They were my first pro­fes­sional spon­sors.

I was the only female col­lege stu­dent they employed at that time. Over the next 4 years, the com­pany ensured I got to expe­ri­ence mul­ti­ple depart­ments and job func­tions: from assem­bly line man­u­fac­tur­ing, to inside sales, an entry-level draft­ing role in prod­uct engi­neer­ing (revis­ing basic dia­grams and blue­prints), plus a vari­ety of sec­re­tar­ial and admin­is­tra­tive roles (includ­ing a relief switch­board oper­a­tor). At the time I was too naïve to real­ize they were prepar­ing me for an even­tual man­age­ment train­ing pro­gram, as their first female man­age­ment trainee, start­ing from the ground floor.

When Bob heard I was head­ing to Mid­dle­bury for a PhD pro­gram right after col­lege, he phoned me two weeks before grad­u­a­tion to say I was “cop­ping out” and “tak­ing the easy path” (fight­ing words in those days!). Instead he chal­lenged me to spend a year work­ing in the real world, at his com­pany, rather than dive straight into acad­e­mia. It was tough love, because it meant risk­ing my fel­low­ship and an all-expenses-paid PhD pro­gram at a pres­ti­gious school.

At a time when most execs placed women solely into cler­i­cal or sec­re­tar­ial roles, Bob found me an entry-level mar­ket­ing role in his com­pany and pro­vided key men­tor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. He taught me many basic lessons about busi­ness, such as how to pro­file the ideal cus­tomer, the ben­e­fits of focus, and com­pet­ing to win. Had it not been for Bob, I might well have ended up in the ivory tower as planned.

When it was time to move to Hanover, New Hamp­shire, where my fiancé was enrolled in a doc­toral pro­gram in ecol­ogy, my boss called his bud­dies from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Busi­ness. He wanted to help me uncover job oppor­tu­ni­ties that would not oth­er­wise be avail­able to a lowly stu­dent wife.  (He knew enough about col­leges’ employ­ment prac­tices to know I’d need a break.)

I didn’t inter­act all that often with Bob McCray, my role was way too junior to afford fre­quent encoun­ters. But I was aware that he was pay­ing atten­tion behind the scenes, kind of like a guardian angel at work.

The New York Times wrote a won­der­ful trib­ute arti­cle to Bob, describ­ing him as the early arche­type of New Eng­land angels (in the sense of angel investors). They also described his amaz­ing skill at match­ing peo­ple to oppor­tu­ni­ties. I am pro­foundly grate­ful to his inter­ven­tion just before grad­u­a­tion. He made sure I was headed for a career in busi­ness.

Tom Byrne

Tom hired me to work for him at Dartmouth’s Kiewit Com­puter Cen­ter, based on a phone call from my boss, a fel­low Tuck B‑School alum, that had taken place sev­eral months before I arrived in Hanover.

Tom had heard that I was mov­ing to Hanover and would be look­ing for a job. He called soon after to ask if I’d be inter­ested in apply­ing for a staff job as the man­ager of cus­tomer ser­vice for Dartmouth’s com­puter cen­ter. I laugh­ingly declined, say­ing my 14 hours of For­tran pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence in col­lege didn’t qual­ify me for such a posi­tion.

Months later I was in Hanover look­ing for a job, and was dis­cour­aged to learn that most of what was avail­able to stu­dent wives was sell­ing shoes – unre­ward­ing retail jobs – or lowly sec­re­tar­ial posi­tions. Dart­mouth, like many top-notch schools with grad­u­ate pro­grams, enjoyed a cap­tive labor pool of highly edu­cated spouses who had only lim­ited job oppor­tu­ni­ties in a col­lege town. I was dis­cov­er­ing that my for­mer glam­orous mar­ket­ing job was irrel­e­vant in a col­lege town that had a for­mu­laic notions of how to employ stu­dent wives.

One day after yet another dis­cour­ag­ing set of job inter­views, I was head­ing back to the biol­ogy lab to meet my fiancé. It was a long walk, I had to find a restroom, and noticed the Kiewit Com­puter Cen­ter en route to the lab. I stopped in, hap­pened to pass Tom Byrne’s office as I was leav­ing Kiewit, remem­bered his phone call sev­eral months ear­lier, and stuck my head into his office to intro­duce myself in per­son. (This sounds like an Out­lier story, doesn’t it?)

Tom remem­bered me, noted that the com­puter cen­ter edi­tor had resigned her posi­tion ear­lier that day, and offered me her job on the spot. I accepted.

And that was my lucky break into the emerg­ing world of com­put­ers and dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Thanks to my job at Kiewit, I was one of the first peo­ple on the planet to use com­puter-based pub­lish­ing. (This became cru­cial to my job 10 years later at Apple.)

Thanks to my teach­ers and men­tors along the way, I’ve been blessed with many oppor­tu­ni­ties, often in the early days of an industry’s emer­gence.

So, thanks for all your con­tri­bu­tions! Since then I’ve tried to do my part, and “pay it for­ward,” help­ing key indi­vid­u­als in the next gen­er­a­tion to find their call­ing.

I’m grate­ful to my com­mu­nity, the peo­ple who made it pos­si­ble.