I wrote this week’s cover story, The New Sheriffs of Wall Street, about SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair and COP Chair Elizabeth Warren. An excerpt:
In the mid-1990s, Schapiro was invited to Chicago to address a convention of commodities-and-derivatives traders. “Talk about a male-dominated industry,” she recalls. “And standing up there, giving my maiden speech and searching the audience for just one or two women I could focus on, thinking there would be some empathy for the position I was in.” The face she lighted on belonged to Bair, a fellow regulator and colleague who knew exactly what she was going through. “My favorite is when you are at a meeting and you say something, and it’s just dead silence,” Bair says. “Fifteen minutes later, some guy says exactly the same thing, and everybody is nodding their head.” All three women know these experiences, but they all have also noticed something else. “There are lots more women at the table now,” Schapiro says. And the women have learned how to work together better. Around Washington, women call this “amplification,” the extra juice that comes when powerful figures join forces to speak up against entrenched interests.
Buy a copy on a newsstand near you, or subscribe here (six weeks for $1.99). In the meantime, the story can also be read online here.