Kellye Whitney -  5/14/12

KeyCorp CEO Beth Mooney says the most important thing for a CEO, male or female, is taking care of clients, stakeholders, employees and the community.

Pressure can be good or bad. Too much in the wrong circumstances can prompt people to make mistakes, get sick or behave badly. Apply pressure in the right circumstances, however, and nature can produce a diamond.

When Beth Mooney, chairman and CEO of KeyCorp, was just starting out, she found herself in a career-defining, high-pressure situation. She’d graduated summa cum laude with a BA in history from the University of Texas and had targeted banking as a likely place to begin her career. But every time she went into a bank, she was asked if she knew how to type. Her first job in the profession was as a secretary. After a move from Houston to Dallas, she vowed never to go that route again; she was a terrible typist.

She said she knew her male counterparts were getting interviews for banking training programs, so she went to all the big banks in Dallas and declared that she wanted to be in their training program. This was not how things were done. At that time, women were not really a part of the industry outside of administrative support roles, but at the Republic Bank of Dallas, now First Republic, she finagled her way into the head of HR’s office at lunch time.

She said the man obviously wanted to get rid of her, and passed her off to the head of the training program so he could explain why she wasn’t suitable.

“I always say if anybody did to me what I did to this gentleman I think I’d call security, but I decided when I got in his office I wasn’t going to leave until he hired me,” Mooney said. “When I got in his office I just wore him down. I was in there for three hours. I told him I could do a great job, I was prepared to go to school at night to get an MBA, it went on and on and on, and finally in frustration, he just looked at me and said, ‘I’ve never seen anyone want something this badly. I will not sleep nights if I’m the person who tells you no.’”

Men in the same position Mooney was after made $18,000. The head of training said he would pay her $12,000, but the bank would also pay for her to get her MBA. However, if she missed one course, dropped out one semester or did anything wrong, she was history. Mooney said he finished with, “Go out there and prove me wrong. Would you please leave?”