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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

Brenda Lauderback was happy in a relatively small world, the world she had dreamed of since she was in high school. She was at Gimbel's in Pittsburgh, her home town, promoted very quickly to buyer, but all of a sudden she found herself in a category - children's clothes - she did not want. She kept requesting a return to readyto-wear, because that's where the future executives were trained, but instead she kept getting more responsibilities within the children's department. Being a woman certainly had something to do with their decision to assign her there, but Lauderback didn't see herself in that pigeonhole. She went outside Gimbel's to find a place where she would be seen as an individual rather than a category.

"It was clear to me that Gimbel's didn't want to move me to another area because the business was good. I didn't know what else to do, so I kept asking for a transfer. Finally in New York on a buying trip, a friend of mine introduced me to a woman at a cocktail party. She turned out to work for an executive search firm. She said, 'Have you thought of leaving Gimbel's?' 'No, not really.' 'You may want to consider it. There are a lot of great companies out there, a lot of great opportunities. You have obviously done well. You have moved fast, and you may just want to look at a broader landscape.' I thought, 'Well, why not?'

"After months of talking to people, going back and forth, I got final job offers from three, Bamberger's of New Jersey, Macy's Kansas City, and Dayton Hudson in Minneapolis. Both Bamberger's and Macy's would have taken me on as a buyer, but not Dayton Hudson. They said, 'Come in as an assistant buyer, because the buying position we want for you won't be open for six months. We'll pay you as a buyer, you can learn our company, and if you do what we think you're going to do, you'll get the buying job in six months.' It was hard to turn down two buying jobs, even though the pay was basically the same. But I was more comfortable with Minneapolis and the people at Dayton Hudson. I liked them a lot. It felt right .." She met the right supporter at the right time, who had just the right suggestion to tap her ambition.