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Continued from previous page
Like Father, Like Daughter - Almost
Carol James, WG'75, Breaks Tradition
Carol Riggins James, WG'75, grew up in a company
town — the company was IBM Corp., the town
Poughkeepsie, N.Y. — and her family was a company
family.
Her mother worked at IBM during World War II.
Her father, Edward Riggins, joined the company
as a systems engineer after he was discharged
from the Army.
IBM loomed large throughout James' teen and
young-adult years, thanks to her father. While other
students at Ladycliff College, where James earned a
BA in mathematics, received the usual letters from
home, James did not. "My father sent descriptions of
new systems at IBM and used words like 'nanosecond'
and 'gigabyte' and 'megabyte,'" she recalls with
a laugh. "Instead of 'Hi, honey, how are you?' I was
getting specs on systems. My friends thought I was
an oddball."
It came as little surprise, then, when James landed
a job at IBM after graduating from Ladycliff. James
worked in software development at IBM from 1969 to
1972, then left the company to earn an MS in computer
science and engineering from Penn's Moore School
of Electrical Engineering. She fully intended to rejoin
her dad at IBM, but her prescribed path took a twist.
After also earning an MBA from Wharton, she
decided to break tradition and take a
post at Exxon Corp., where she
was a senior petroleum
analyst for nine years.
"Wharton prepared me
from a business standpoint and gave me
total credibility, but
I had to prove
myself," she says.
Initially her
father was dismayed with her
decision, but had
a change of heart.
Says James: "He
told me there was
some history of his
family being connected with Standard Oil,
the precursor to Exxon."
As James' career
evolved, her father's interest
in her work continued to encourage her. One of just a handful of
women at the Moore and Wharton schools, James was
also largely surrounded by male colleagues at Exxon.
She says humor was a key to overcoming any potential gender friction.
"In the early part of my career at Exxon, I participated
in a high-level conference where executives
from all over the world came together," James recalls.
"There were discussions, we were making decisions,
and then we took a break. I was the only one who
went to the ladies' room. Everybody came back and
we seemed to pick up further ahead than where we
had left off. I raised my hand and asked about these
new issues, but was told, 'We're very sorry, Carol. We
talked about these things in the men's room.' I said,
'Well, I know where I have to go if I want to find
things out.' That broke the ice, and I ended up having
lots of mentors."
James left Exxon in 1986 to become vice president
at S.N. Phelps & Co. of Greenwich, Conn., where she
was an investment banker for mergers and acquisitions
and recapitalizations. In 1993, she joined
Artemis Capital Group in New York, an investment
bank and financial services firm founded by six
women, and served as senior vice president and
chief financial officer.
Since 1998, James has been vice president and
senior private banker at PNC Advisors in Greenwich,
a financial management unit of PNC Bank Corp.,
where she heads relationship management and new-business
development. She also manages the expansion
in the New York area of a PNC initiative called
the Women's Financial Services Network. Launched
as a pilot program in Philadelphia in 1995, the
network caters to the financial needs of
women executives and professionals,
women business owners, women of
wealth, and women facing significant
life changes such as divorce
or widowhood.
James' interest in women's
issues extends beyond the
workplace. The longtime
Greenwich resident, who has
two children (William, 19,
and Lizzy, 15) and is married
to William James, also WG'75,
involves herself in a host of
charitable, faith-based and
community organizations. They
include Girls Inc., which sponsors
educational programs and
other activities for girls 7 to 18.
"That's my own personal crusade,"
James says. "It's my feeling
that women — whether they be seven or
12 or 50 or 80 — should understand that they
have capabilities."
When her father died last September, it "was a
huge blow to me," James says. "The two times during
my career that he took pause was when I decided not
to go to IBM out of business school, and then when I
went to PNC. But ultimately I think he appreciated
why I opened another chapter in my life."
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