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Excerpts from Cracking the Corporate Code

Alana Robinson earned one of the first degrees in computer science at Grambling State University, and she was certainly the first woman. "IBM wanted all 12 of us. They came in and did a clean sweep." It was not a slam-dunk for her, however. Discouraged from summer internships by her father-he believed it was inappropriate for girls to work outside the home-and wearing her engagement ring for each campus interview during her senior year, she got no interest from any recruiters. "All of my friends were going on trips everywhere to interview. I wasn't. I couldn't understand why, especially because IBM had been so interested in me before. One of my friends finally told me, 'You need to take that engagement ring off.' So I did, I put on my class ring, and I got an interview every time after that. All I had to do was take my ring off, and things starting clicking."