By Patricia Chadwick
Normally, I prefer to discuss the economy or to tell other people’s stories, but this month is a little bit different. This month I have news to share with you that I think is very exciting and I hope you will too. Here is the press release for my new book, being released next month.
Wall Street legend Patricia Walsh Chadwick recounts how she clawed her way up to success in a male-dominated world, starting from the bottom at age 17 after being forced out of her home: a religious cult.
At 49, Patricia Walsh Chadwick was named a Global Partner at Invesco, marking the culmination of a career that began with her first job as a receptionist at a brokerage firm at the age of 19. Over her 30 years as a rare woman in the high-pressure, high-stakes business of finance, she earned a reputation as sharp, driven, exacting, and fierce. Throughout her highly successful tenure on Wall Street and nearly two decades after, Patricia kept a secret hidden from nearly everyone: She had grown up inside a Catholic religious community turned into a cult.
In BREAKING GLASS: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street (Post Hill Press; May 14, 2024; $30.00 Hardcover), Patricia Walsh Chadwick continues to tell the story of her bizarre upbringing that she began in her 2019 memoir, Little Sister. In this coming-of-age follow-up, she revisits her childhood through a different lens, offering insights into how the experiences of her early life shaped her character and helped her forge her path in business and finance. Above all, as Chadwick attests: “This is a story about resilience.”
From the tender age of six through her high school years, Patricia was raised in The Center, an isolated, rural community of 100 members, including 39 children, led by Leonard Feeney, an excommunicated Jesuit priest, and managed with an iron fist by his spiritual alter ego, Catherine Clarke. Together, they created a monastic environment that demanded obedience, silence, chastity, and detachment from family, achieved by separating parents from their children and forbidding members to read newspapers, watch television, listen to the radio, or communicate with outsiders. Patricia defied Sister Catherine’s mission to mold her into a compliant, submissive nun. At 17, in the middle of the turbulent 1960s, she was expelled from her home in Still River, Massachusetts, without a hint of how to survive, much less thrive, in an unfamiliar and frightening world. Yet thrive she did.
In 1966, Patricia began her new life in secretarial school, where she excelled at typing and shorthand but struggled to navigate social cues and casual conversation. (After failing to find a definition in the dictionary, she mustered the courage to ask a classmate to explain the meaning of a frequently heard word: “shit.”) While the era’s counterculture was not to her taste, she basked in the freedom to shun the conventional path of marriage and children. A pragmatist and a rebel, Patricia set her sights on building a career in finance, a hard-charging field ruled by men.
In BREAKING GLASS, Patricia Walsh Chadwick recounts her rise to success. From her first job as a receptionist at a Boston brokerage firm, learning about stocks by day while going to college at night, ultimately earning her degree in economics from Boston University, she moved on and up to research analyst with a Philadelphia-based firm, where she became immersed in the inner-workings of trucking, airlines, and railroads. In 1975, she moved to New York City and made her debut on Wall Street specializing in the machinery industry, and, five years later, landed at Citicorp, as a capital goods analyst. While there, under the helm of the legendary Peter Vermilye, she became a portfolio manager, responsible for billions of dollars in assets.
Through bull and bear markets, corporate upheavals, and the crash of 1987, Patricia remained undaunted and kept moving forward in her career. Along the way, however, she faced considerable hardships and challenges, some unique and others woefully common to women. With remarkable honesty and courage, Chadwick opens up about:
• Her determination to repair her relationship with her parents, who left The Center when it dissolved, several years after she was ousted, while struggling to understand how they could have sacrificed their family to their allegiance to a fanatical religious cult.
• The traumatic experience of being drugged and raped by an older male colleague—and how she picked herself up and put the horror and shame behind her, simply because she had to in order to protect her professional reputation and keep her job.
• Why she walked away from the opportunity to attend Harvard Business School, despite the thrill of being accepted, based on a sound reason: She was already a success and did not need an MBA to keep rising in a career that she loved.
• How, after years of resisting marriage, she took a bold leap at age 36 and said “I Do” to John Chadwick, a fellow portfolio manager at Citicorp, and, a few years later, suddenly yearned to have children of her own. At the age of 45, Patricia gave birth to twins.
• Her determination to “have it all,” maintaining her demanding career on Wall Street by accepting the position of Global Partner at Invesco while being a fully devoted mother.
• Her decision, on the cusp of a new millennium at age 51, to leave Wall Street behind and embark on a second career, with more flexibility and fresh rewards, as a corporate board director and expert witness.
Despite being branded a “witch” by some, Chadwick has no regrets about pursuing a career in finance with drive, grit, perfectionism, and impatience—qualities of leadership that are lauded in men. She reflects, “I was also lucky that for much of my career on Wall Street, I had the wind at my back. In the end, I turn to my long-held belief in grace. I will be forever grateful that I have been blessed with the grace of optimism, of resilience, of gratitude, and of joy.” Dedicated to her mentors, BREAKING GLASS is sure to inspire young women and anyone struggling to believe in their ability to overcome formidable obstacles and achieve whatever they set their mind to.
Following a successful 30-year career in the investment business, culminating as a Global Partner at Invesco, PATRICIA WALSH CHADWICK now sits on a number of corporate boards and writes about economic, social, and political issues including for the Sentinel Hometown News (covering Greenwich and New Canaan). Her pro-bono activities include mentoring young women in high school and college and providing strategic planning advice to not-for-profit organizations. She is the author of a previous memoir, Little Sister. A mother of twins, a daughter and a son, she lives in Connecticut with her husband John.
