Training to Work

Kathleen McChesney

Special Agent in Charge
FBI Chicago Field Office
Chicago, Illinois

I wanted to work as an FBI agent when I graduated from college, but I couldn't because the FBI only hired men to be agents back then. So I got a job working as an identification technician at the King County jail in Seattle. When people were arrested, I fingerprinted and photographed them, and then I verified their identity. It definitely wasn't a glamorous job, but it was considered a necessary job, and it was my way to get a foot in the door of a good organization. Not everyone who graduates from college starts at the top. There aren't many people in the FBI who are more senior than I am now -- that includes men hired as agents when I went to work at the jail.

I always encourage people to consider taking those kinds of foot-in-the-door jobs. In the long run, it's often better to take a lower-level job in a place where you want to work than it is to hold out for some fabulous job right off the bat. People in an organization will get to know you, and you will have opportunities to volunteer or to start a mentoring process within the place that you work. A lower-level job also provides good training if you want to be a manager someday, because it gives you tremendous appreciation for the many roles that exist within an organization, how those duties fit together, and how important it is that everybody -- no matter what their position is -- feels that they are important to the larger mission.

Kathleen McChesney (media.chicago@fbi.gov) became one of the FBI's top-ranked woman agents in the field last year when she took over operations at the FBI's Chicago field office. Only 3 of the FBI's 56 field offices are headed by women, and Chicago's office is the largest of them.

Michael Stern

Cofounder
Aquarium Ventures LLC
New Haven, Connecticut

When I was about 12, my friend Jody threw a Halloween party at her house, and she invited me to work as a deejay. I got a friend to help me, and we enlisted two other people to be dancers and to keep the crowd interested. We had forgotten to bring a tape player, so I had to use one that belonged to Jody's father. We got paid $50 and a pair of Knicks tickets -- and we couldn't believe our good luck. We divided our earnings, and that was the beginning of my "illustrious" career as a deejay. It was sort of a ridiculous pipe dream to think that at 12 years old we could start a business working as deejays. But we thought, "Of course we can do this. Why not?" By the time the two of us were 16, we were working every weekend and making up to $100 each a night.

Now I'm a junior at Yale. What I learned working as a deejay has applied double to my current enterprise. Earlier this year, a friend and I started a high-tech incubator for collegiate startups. The most important factor in any business isn't the equipment or the marketing -- it's the people who are working with you and for you. Our little ragtag bunch of kids made my friend's party a success by creating a fun experience. I couldn't have created that experience without help from the others. Success is all about having the right people and making sure that they're happy, dedicated, and sharing in your profits.

Michael Stern (mike@aquariumventures.com) cofounded Aquarium Ventures with Peter Venech, a Yale sophomore, earlier this year with what they say is a total commitment of $1 million from a network of angel investors.

Karen Nussbaum

Director, Working Women's Department
AFL-CIO
Washington, DC

For my first significant job, I worked as a clerk-typist at a university when I was 19. Back then, women really were second-class citizens in the workplace. We saw our secondary status in so many different ways -- in our paychecks, in our lack of opportunity for promotion, in all kinds of day-to-day indignities that we endured. We were the "office wives," and we worked for "pin money" -- as if we were all going to spend our earnings on brooches. In fact, we were paying mortgages and providing for our families. Of course, so much has changed now. We still don't get paid what we're worth, but at least now everybody knows why we're in the workplace.

The problem of gender equity in the workplace is systemic, not individual. I've learned that trying to cut a deal by yourself is never as effective as working together with others to set policies or practices that benefit everybody. It may be taboo to tell each other how much you make, but the only one who benefits from a lack of information among workers is the employer.

Karen Nussbaum (knussbau@aflcio.org) is the founder of 9to5, a national working-women's organization, and is the director of the AFL-CIO department that works on issues of special concern to women.