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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m M a r c h / A p r i l 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 15 Women Who Mean Business M ary Barneby is passion- ate about empowering girls and women. You can feel it as she explains why Girl Scout- ing is as vital these days as it was 107 years ago, when the organization was formed. "e values and the mission remain the same –– 'building girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place,'" says Barneby, who is chief executive officer of the Girl Scouts of Connecticut. "What's different now is we're really focused on helping girls to be leaders and be career-ready. "We've evolved programmati- cally." Barneby, 66, oversees programs and services for 2,500 Girl Scout troops statewide –– nearly 27,000 girls and 13,000 adults. Before that she spent a trailblazing career in the financial industry before taking on her current challenge in 2012. Her many accolades include the Women's Venture Fund's Highest Leaf award for commitment to mentoring women, and the Nation- al Organization of Italian-Amer- ican Women's "Wise Woman" award. Barneby has served on multiple boards, including the Connecticut Council for Education Reform, the YMCA in Stamford, Interval House in Hartford and the University of New Haven, where she currently is on the Advisory Board for the School of Arts & Sciences. She also was founder and former You Go, Girls A 'second-act' career for a financial- services trailblazer is helping a rising generation of female leaders-to-be blaze their own trails By Karen Singer ' I m a r v e l a t h o w c u r i o u s t h e y a r e , h o w m u c h e n e r g y t h e y h a v e a n d h o w e x c i t e d t h e y a r e t o g o o u t i n t o t h e w o r l d . ' - Mary Barneby on Girl Scouts in 2019 Continued on Page 42 president of the National Defined Contribution Council and former chair of the American Heart Asso- ciation's New York City affiliate. Barneby displayed an early inter- est in the advancement of women. In her fourth-grade weekly class debate, she argued why a woman should be President of the United States. "I chose the topic," she says. Barneby also sprang into action when her brother became an altar server, by collecting signatures for a petition allowing girls to fill the same role and rounding up 25 people to join her in delivering the petition to the rectory. (It was to no avail; the Vatican did not approve the practice until 1994.) Barneby credits her own Girl Scouting experience with laying the groundwork for her accom- plishments. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1950s, Barneby spent preteen years earning camping, cooking and other merit badges in a Girl Scout troop at her local church. e process kindled her achieve- ment-oriented and competitive spirit. "I wanted to have more badges than everybody else," Barneby recalls with a chuckle. "I don't know that at the time I saw the Girl Scouts as an empowerment organization." At a single-gender parochial high school, Barneby became a leader in student government and editor of the school newspaper. e turbulent 1960s fueled her commitment to social justice. While studying psychology and philosophy at New York University, Barneby says, "I realized that living in a world with gender equity was important to me." Aer graduating in 1974, Barneby took a "temporary" job at Merrill Lynch on Wall Street — and ended up staying. "I was always good at math, and started to work in finance," she says. "Very few women were doing that." Inspired by the Women's Finan- cial Association of New York [an organization she later served as president], Barneby and several female Merrill Lynch colleagues started a similar program to help one another succeed, and to identi- fy and mentor young women in the industry. "She took me on as a cause and we became great friends," recalls Madeline Weinstein, who joined Merrill Lynch in the 1980s and became a senior vice president — and the highest-ranking female in Merrill's brokerage operations. "I don't think she ever said 'No' when anyone contacted her for career advice," adds Weinstein. "Even when we were working mothers, Mary always found a way to do it all." Arising, and shining Barneby advanced rapidly at Merrill Lynch, earning titles rang- ing from vice president of credit services and vice president and manager of marketing services to vice president and division manager of retirement plans. Along the way, she earned an MBA in finance from Fordham, and certification in investment management analysis at the Whar- ton School. During the early 1980s, Barneby was a pioneer and became a leading industry authority in the devel- opment and marketing of 401(k) programs, then in their infancy but soon to become a staple of Ameri- cans' retirement portfolios. "As people moved to de- fined-contribution plans, I became very much in demand," she says. "It was a kind of meteoric rise. "What I really learned is you could be authentic and be yourself, but you can't expect people to love you, and you can't really do the job if you can't make difficult decisions that impact people's lives," she explains. Between 1988 and 2000, Barneby developed retirement and invest- ment services as president of several companies, including Dreyfus and Delaware Investments. She subsequently became CEO of Vanteq Inc., a short-lived online financial services start-up that sold second mortgages and investments. e fledgling firm raised more than $13 million before venture capital dollars dried up following the dot. com debacle and especially the Sep- tember 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. "It was the first time I really failed at something," she recounts, "and I learned it wasn't going to crush me." Revisiting her options, Barneby decided to try something different. Over the subsequent decade, she worked for UBS in several states, helping to create and hone the firm's wealth-management culture, along PHOTO/DAVID OTTENSTEIN

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