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Connie Duckworth, WG'79
By Nancy Moffitt
Connie Duckworth, WG'79, was an
Army brat who grew up thinking
moving was fun. "It was an adventure," she says – a view that has
served her well in business."The
only constant in business is
change," she says.
This ease with change and uncertainty stayed with
Duckworth through college in Texas, graduate school at
Wharton, and throughout her career. She began at Arco in
the oil business in the late 1970s when the industry was at
its hottest, then became a woman of firsts at Goldman
Sachs, where she stayed for 20 years and spent hundreds
of hours helping younger women understand the hows
and whys of succeeding in business.
In 2001, Duckworth retired from Goldman to make mentoring fledgling
businesswomen her full-time vocation, a
change that's left her no less harried than the world of
sales and trading. Over the past three years, Duckworth
and several partners founded 8 Wings Enterprises, a
group of "angel investors" that advises and selectively
funds early-stage, women-led companies, and she co-authored
(with Sharon Whiteley and Kathy Elliott) The Old
Girls' Network: Insider Advice for Women Building
Businesses in a Man's World. Duckworth also recently
completed a two-year term as chair of the Committee of
200, a professional organization of the nation's most powerful
women entrepreneurs and corporate executives. "It's
a full plate," says Duckworth from her cell phone on her
way to the airport to fly to Philadelphia for a speaking
engagement.
The pace is nothing new. At Goldman, Duckworth, 49,
worked with companies all over the country, serving as the
firm's first female sales and trading partner, co-head of
the Municipal Bond Department, head of Fixed Income in
Los Angeles, and co-head of the Chicago office.
The Old Girls' Network draws on Duckworth's many
years observing and working closely with male and
female executives and entrepreneurs at Goldman and its
client firms. Described as a soup-to-nuts guide to entrepreneurship in a
male-dominated business culture, the
book patiently takes readers through every step of starting
a business, offering myriad examples of women who
"mixed passion, vision and a pioneering spirit" in building
their enterprises.
"Many women don't realize that they can achieve their
dreams and execute on their passions in business,"
Duckworth says. "It really is a wonderful form of self-expression. And the beauty
of having a successful business is it gives
you a wonderful economic platform from
which to do good."
Duckworth met her husband, Tom, whom she shared a
four-person cubicle with, at her first corporate job at Arco.
Despite their busy schedules, the Duckworths have managed to have four
children along the way, two girls and
two boys ages 13, 11, 9 and 7, with whom they live in a
Chicago suburb. "My children by far and away are the best
thing I've ever done," says Duckworth, who credits her
supportive, equally involved husband for her ability to
manage a career and a large family. "I married well," she
says.
Her ties with Wharton have also remained strong. A
member of the School's Board of Overseers and winner of
the Kathleen McDonald Distinguished Alumnae Award
from the Wharton Women in Business organization,
Duckworth says she never could have predicted her career
evolution. "A career is a long time. When you're just getting out of business school,
you sometimes think that if
you don't find the exact right job, you are somehow going
to be disadvantaged. What I found was that my career in
business was really more of a journey, and I wanted to
take advantage of opportunities along the way."
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