On July 10th some 100 high-ranking women in financial services from around the country gathered at the Rubin Museum in New York for the SourceMedia's Women Advisor Forum. The afternoon event, sponsored by TIAA-CREF and presented by Bank Investment Consultant, Financial Planning, and On Wall Street magazines included a keynote address by Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Chairman of Citi Global Wealth Management, a talk by Muriel Siebert, founder and president of Siebert and Co., and two panel discussions featuring various industry luminaries. The atmosphere was classy and convivial, as women shared experiences, problems and advice about working in the industry.

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MICKIE SIEBERT: PIONEER

The forum started out appropriately enough with Murial "Mickie" Siebert, the grand dame of women on Wall Street. Mickie's primary claim to fame is that she was the first woman to apply for and get a seat on the NYSE, back in 1967. She also turned her eponymous firm, Murial Siebert & Co. into one of the first, if not the first, discount brokerages. She later became superintendent of banking in New York City. She has been truly intrepid and innovative, and both men and women can learn a lot about leadership from her life story, which was published by Simon & Schuster in 2002: Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick.

Siebert Recalls Her Mentor, Her NYSE Battle

There wasn't a more moving moment than when Siebert revealed that her close friend and business mentor Gerald Tsai passed away last week. Tsai was her sole supporter during her battle with the old boys' club at the New York Stock Exchange, a group she, ever the lady, simply refers to as "the gentlemen."

"On December 28, 1967 I acquired my seat on the New York Stock Exchange. But it was Gerald's idea. He ran Fidelity Capital and encouraged me to buy my seat," said Siebert, who was making about $130 a week at that time, and had obtained her first order by accident. Who would trade with a woman after all?

Apparently Tsai sensed times were changing.

"Gerald said to me, 'You should buy a seat. I don't think there's a law against. it.' So I took home the NYSE constitution and studied it that weekend," she recalled.

Obtaining that seat was an uphill battle all the way through with "the gentlemen." What should have been a proud moment in the NYSE's history is instead one of its most shameful.

Although she had risen to a partnership in a leading brokerage firm and had made big money for her colleagues, her attempts to get a seat on the stock exchange were patronized, ridiculed or openly opposed by many men on the Street. She was turned down by nine of the ten men she asked to sponsor her application. The NYSE required her to get a letter from bank saying they would lend her $300,000 and the bank required her to have been admitted to the exchange before they would do that. After a period of wrangling, she passed the exam and was accepted. "The day we were sworn in, all the men received a scroll and a badge," said Mickie, who is still very active in the industry. "I received nothing and didn't get a scroll until the next chairman of the exchange signed one for me. I can't tell you how that made me feel," she exclaimed. "And so it went."

Siebert eventually received her badge and scroll through a subsequent NYSE Chairman – "maybe he knew how to spell my name, I don't know," – but he was not without his biases either. Muriel noted she was in a New York City restaurant one evening, on a date, when that chairman walked over to her table and told her to "A-B-C" her seat, meaning, essentially, to subcontract it out to a male. His statement: the men didn't like a woman on the trading floor.