The Broad story

I worked for Goldman Sachs, headquartered at 85 Broad Street in New York City, for 14 years. I had an amazing career at the firm, mostly because I had the honour to work with some of the most exceptional people in the business. When I left in 1988 to raise my daughter Meredith and later, my son Christopher, I felt a powerful sense of loss. I realised that while I certainly missed the action on the trading floor, I missed my colleagues even more.

We had gone through a lot together: the transit strike in the late 70's, the oil crisis in the early 80's and the stock market crash in ‘87, and the untimely and tragic loss of John Powers, Lisa Graham, and Fred Medick. As corny as it sounds, we were comrades in arms.

In 1997 I founded the 85 Broads network as a totally independent community for current and former Goldman Sachs women. I did this for one simple reason: GS had no alumni network, so it was virtually impossible for women coming into the firm to know in whose footsteps they were following. And there just weren't enough senior female role models at 85 Broad Street to bring these young, talented women ‘up the learning curve'. The solution? Create an independently run network so that former GS women could share their experiences, their talent, and their passion for the firm's culture with the young women who were joining the firm by the hundreds.

Sadly, the initial 85 Broads ‘experiment' failed. Without an efficient way to stay connected, reuniting current and former GS women professionals who were scattered all over the world was virtually impossible. It took two more years before we were ready to launch 85 Broads.com-a completely independent, online global ‘internetwork'.

Thanks to the internet 85 Broads flourished. In 2000, our bold experiment became bolder. We invited women attending the leading graduate business schools to join the 85 Broads network, regardless of chosen career path. We forged co-mentoring relationships with these fabulous women by loudly proclaiming that we were going to mentor and advise each other-regardless of age-as equals.

In 2004, we replicated our highly successful co-mentoring model by inviting undergraduate women attending leading colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad to join 85 Broads.

85 Broads has focused most of its time, energy, and resources on helping women at all stages of their lives and careers earn a higher ‘return' on their education and career paths by leveraging the network's greatest asset - its members.

Today, our global community has over 17,000 members. We continue to invite thousands of incoming college freshmen as well as women entering graduate school to join as members of 85 Broads. These young women will have the opportunity to leverage some of the most extraordinary talent on the planet. We have ventured boldly where no network has gone before. 85 Broads provides a platform to connect amazing women across generations who know that they will build businesses, lead nations, and change the world.