CEO bows out on a high

She was asked whether she considered herself a trailblazer in the industry, but she eschewed the term, revealing that she had not encountered major obstacles during her career, or felt that she had been held back by her male peers along the way.

“I didn’t think about it that way,” she said. “I was an education major undergrad. My parents were both teachers. I got out of college and decided I wanted to go back and get an MBA. And literally my dad said to me, ‘what do you know about business?’ I’m like, well, I’ll figure it out.

“So I took two classes, did well and went to school full time. What was interesting is that when I went to look at Wall Street, women MBAs were few and far between. So it was relatively easy to get hired. But it wasn’t like I was saying, ‘Oh, I’m blazing a new path’. I just considered myself lucky to have the opportunity to make that career shift at a young age and land a seat at Salomon Brothers.”

All this happened for Cook at a time when childcare and paternity benefits were conspicuous by their absence.

“When I was there, I had three children in five years,” she said. “And by the time I had that third, my boss literally said to me, ‘Patti, I think you hold the record for the woman with the most maternity leaves’. So, it was definitely a bit of an oddity, but I don’t think I’d ever felt (I was) held back. I really didn’t.”