During my college years I met a woman who would become one of the most inspirational people that I have veer met and someone who became my very best friend. That lady’s name is Michelle L Marquez and she is a woman who, along with other trailblazers, has helped to change the face of the stock exchange. This was always a male dominated industry and during our time at university studying law many would scoff at the Michelle’s dream of working on Wall Street. Michelle managed to do everything that she wanted to do however and as a result of women like her, there are no ladies working in all kinds of jobs from arbitration to fraud prevention, the securities commission and of course, on the trading floor. It wasn’t always easy though.
Working Harder
We all want to work to the best of our ability when beginning a new job or career but in the case of Michelle during the early days, she had to work even harder than most. Many thought that this wasn’t a place for a woman so Michelle was forced to work harder than the rest to prove that she could do the job, and also to prove that she could do the job better than, or at least equal to the other men.
Judgement
Michelle never worked on the trading floor, it was her job to monitor what the traders were doing to ensure that everything was being done above the law. As you can well imagine these male traders were not happy when they realized that there would be a woman scrutinizing their every move, as previously this had been something of a boys club. There were many occasions during these early years that she would spot something untoward and take it up the chain, only for nothing to be done about it. Michelle however is one of the most resolute people that I know and through her persistence she eventually began to make a splash, and was respected for it.
Strength
Whist she probably wouldn’t care to admit it, the early years of her career took huge amounts of emotional strength on the part of Michelle. Each day she had to listen to sexist comments, derogatory comments and the expectation from all of those around her that at some point she would fail. Michelle didn’t fail, she worked herself to the bone in order to prove that she wouldn’t and whilst she may not have realized it, in doing so she became part of the group of insertional ladies that helped to change the status quo of a male dominated environment.
There are thousands of women like Michelle all over the world that have suffered and worked tirelessly so that these male driven industries began to include more females, there is still a way to go of course but women everywhere should be grateful for ladies just like Michelle.
