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BARBARA FRANKEL: I am here with Kimberley Copeland, who is going to tell us the first part of her story of an experience that she had that can be a warning to many of you. She's not going to tell you the name of the company she worked for, but we will tell you that it is one of the most well-known investment banks.

Tell us, to start with, why you want to go public with this, and what lessons that you hope others can learn from your experience.

KIMBERLEY COPELAND: There are three reasons why I'd like my story to be heard. The first one is because this is not solely my experience. Social insensitivity and marginalization in the workplace directly affects the performance of many. It is my hope that telling this story might lead to an understanding of why many minorities who have been hotly pursued in recruiting processes and have been identified as top tier have been unsuccessful in the workplace.

The second reason is that it may encourage others to strive to articulate their own experiences of social insensitivity and give them the courage to speak openly about their experiences as that honesty will be fundamental for igniting efforts for change and accountability in corporate culture.

And lastly, I hope that honest dialogue about these aspects of corporate culture might contribute to management efforts toward implementing stronger and more effective retention strategies.

FRANKEL: Tell us your story: where you grew up, what your background is, and what led you to start a career in investment banking.

COPELAND: I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm a member of a loving and supporting family. I'm a fourth-generation college graduate, which is important in the black community. I was reared with two parents with a sincere appreciation for education and opportunity and exposure. I graduated from the Hawkins School, which is one of the most competitive independent schools in northeast Ohio. I went on to receive a B.A. from Spelman College, which is the premiere institution for African-American women in the country. In every way, I've been prepared for excellence and it's also been expected of me.

I was exposed to the banking industry at the age of 17. I began as a summer intern in retail brokerage in Cleveland, Ohio, and then I transitioned to intern at a municipal finance firm in Atlanta, Ga. However, my first opportunity to work on Wall Street didn't come until the spring of 2001.

I was, in 2001, pretty ambitious. I was a political-science student in my junior year who decided that I did not want to go to law school, and at the time I noticed that Wall Street was beginning to make a very deliberate and aggressive recruiting effort at select historically black colleges and universities. Spelman was included in that pool and I took full advantage of those recruiting efforts. I found myself interviewing with every firm. I was on airplanes weekly that season, back and forth to New York City, Los Angeles, interviewing by day, going to networking receptions and very nice dinners by night. I would receive calls on my cell phone from managing directors and heads of business encouraging me to choose their firm. I was courted by minority employees, convincing me that the opportunities were the best at their organization. By the end of my junior year of college, I had four offers for summer internships from four of the most reputable bulge-bracket institutions on Wall Street.

FRANKEL: How did that make you feel, all of that attention?

COPELAND: Well, I felt like I was the pick of the litter. I felt like a star. I felt like a college athlete with No. 1 draft expectations being pursued by swarming agents. So I felt great.

FRANKEL: What advice did your parents give you as you were being pursued by so many people?

COPELAND: My parents, who have been extraordinarily successful, had actually never been in that situation. So they couldn't offer me very critical advice, but they were just exceedingly proud of me. And I was proud of myself. I felt as if I was standing on their shoulders—of my parents, of my grandparents, of my community. I was having the opportunity to do something that they had not yet done. So it wasn't advice—it was just a lot of encouragement and pride.

FRANKEL: If you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, at that stage, what advice would you give her?

COPELAND: I would say, "Don't be over-clouded by the naïveté and the optimism and the excitement over the opportunity. Don't let that overshadow any kind of critical analysis of the culture or the environment that you could be working in." I would say, "Ask very probing questions."

At that time, I was exposed to a lot of minority employees, and so I could have been asking a lot of questions—not just about the work or about the product [but] about the experience of working at the company. I could have identified employees that shared my same gender and ethnicity and probed them openly and honestly about their experiences, both good and bad.

FRANKEL: We had a preliminary discussion and you had told me that your parents were very proud that you were thinking about investment banking. And I know that your mother's been in the investment banking industry for a long time. How much did that factor in your decision to choose this particular career path?

COPELAND: It was absolutely one of the most important factors. My parents sacrificed and worked very hard so that my brothers and I could have just the best opportunities and the best exposure ... One of the mottos that was in our household and was actually the motto for my high school was that each generation introduces its successor to a higher plane of life, and so this was the higher plane of life. I felt as if I was living their dream for me.

FRANKEL: Had you done a lot of homework on the investment-banking industry itself?

COPELAND:  Yes, in terms of a general understanding of the basics. As I said, I had been working in the industry in some way since I was 17 years old, so I knew that this was something that was a big plan B for me if I wasn't going to go to law school.

FRANKEL: Had you worked in New York, where most of the action is?

COPELAND: No, so this summer internship in 2001 would have been my first exposure to New York.

FRANKEL: What encouraged you to go to the particular firm that you chose?

COPELAND: The firm that I selected offered to pay my tuition for my senior year of college, so that was my decision.

FRANKEL: Did they send some people—particularly people of color—to meet with you beforehand?

COPELAND: Yes.

FRANKEL: And what kind of things did they tell you?

COPELAND: Only positive things. I mean, they talked about their experiences, the things that they have been able to do. My first round of interviews, they came down to Spelman, and so everyone I met with was of color, so I had this initial impression of this work environment that is very inclusive of people of color, and that they're everywhere and very successful.

These people even followed up with me when I was in the midst of the decision process—calling me and giving me reasons why I should be doing this. You have individuals taking you out to very nice dinners, both in Atlanta and in New York, wherever I was interviewing, and so the image was success. It was the dream—the American dream—and these individuals were living it out.

FRANKEL: So you bought all of this.

COPELAND: I bought it.

FRANKEL: Not that most people at that age would, but did you ask them any discerning questions?  

COPELAND: No. Nothing about the culture. I was really focused on the work, how my background would fit into a desk or an environment—I was in a salesman-training program at the time—so what was most competitive, what was the biggest revenue generator, what was the most popular desk, but nothing really about the culture and what their experience had been, just in their social interactions in the workplace.

FRANKEL: So is it safe to say that you were somewhat dazzled by the whole prospect of this?

COPELAND: Absolutely, absolutely.

FRANKEL: So you set off for your summer internship, and what happened then?

COPELAND: The summer was a grand continuation of the recruiting process. I had one main objective going through the summer, which was to earn the full-time offer. I knew that if I earned the offer that my future would be secure because it could either mean that I would be settling with that firm or I could leverage that offer with another firm. So that was the objective, and I excelled at it. I really ate it up—I networked and I politicked and I secured face time with senior-level management, and that was probably the most memorable and important aspect of my summer internship.

FRANKEL: How did you, as an intern, network and politick? That's something that most interns don't do.

COPELAND: At the Wall Street firms, you have a weekly session with the senior-level management. There actually is quite a lot of exposure to senior-level management, and I think the diversity-recruitment effort was so strong that they made sure that their diverse candidates got in front of very senior-level management.

I remember asking to speak with the head of equities at the time, and that meeting was arranged in two hours. So I did kind of have this illusion that it was that easy—that really, you could have access to anybody that you wanted to talk to, to the decision makers.

FRANKEL: What percentage of the interns were black and Latino?

COPELAND: This is a rough guess, but I would say 15 percent. Weekly, we would have a lunch meeting with someone who was very high level. So already, right there, you have this direct interaction with an individual. We would sit in on very important calls and things of that nature, so there was a lot of access at the time.

Everything was going extremely well. I identified early on the desk that I was very interested in working with and was kind of learning as I went along how to circle back to that desk and network and politick with them, and I ended up receiving an offer with that particular group.

So it was a success. I really drank up the whole experience like a glass of water. It was wonderful. I left feeling very optimistic. I was charged. I was excited. I accepted my offer on Sept. 10, 2001—and even in light of the events that happened the next day, I was still very, very optimistic about the potential of this opportunity, so it was a great summer. It was an excellent summer.

FRANKEL: So then you went back and you did your senior year at Spelman.

COPELAND: I did and I graduated.

FRANKEL: We assume you did very well.

COPELAND: Yes.

FRANKEL: And they had a job waiting for you?

COPELAND: Yes, they did.

FRANKEL: You didn't look anywhere else?

COPELAND: I didn't. It was my intention to, but the recruiting process in 2001 was difficult. There weren't a lot of firms recruiting. You had 9/11, and then you had Enron, so if you had a job, you were considered lucky, and you held on tight to that.

FRANKEL: So you went there—you moved to New York?

COPELAND: I moved to New York.

FRANKEL: We are going to save what happened to you there, which is quite a story, for our next session, but before we end this part I would like to ask you, in retrospect, how well your education prepared you for this job and what happened to you later on.

COPELAND: I can say that I was definitely prepared academically. I was as bright, if not brighter, than many of the analysts that entered that year. I was prepared socially. I can walk into any room; I've been equipped with social graces and can engage in meaningful and relevant conversation.

But I was not prepared emotionally. I was not prepared for a lack of regard and respect for my race and my gender. I was not prepared for the social acceptance of sexual harassment. I was not prepared for inadvertent or indirect racial discrimination.

I was not prepared to disagree so fundamentally with the political and moral perspectives of many of my colleagues, perspectives that did not have any regard for the oppression and suffering of my community, perspectives that were voiced openly and freely in the workplace.

So I was not prepared for that. I was not prepared for the way that that environment would abuse my psyche and diminish my personhood. I was not prepared to lose my drive, or my motivation, or my optimism; or to be expected to excel in an environment that had little regard for me as a black woman, much less a human being. So I was not prepared for that.

Next: Rude Awakening on the Job

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