Breaking Out of the Boy’s Club: How a Female Banker Quit Going to Strip Clubs

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If you’re a woman of a certain age who’s worked in a competitive industry, parts of this story may sound familiar.

Lena Bryant was a young banking executive back in the ’90s, a business dominated then (and now) by men. She quickly determined that the only way to compete against the boys was to *be* one of the boys. Even if that meant tagging along with male co-workers to a strip club. “It was so weird,” she tells me, shuddering at the memories.

Those days are over, thank God. (They *are* over now, right?) Lena is now head of risk management at a major Southern California bank. She is disarmingly open and honest about her professional journey. She does not hold back when talking about the choices she made, the regrets she has, and the wisdom she’s learned.

From Sweden to San Diego

“I’ve been in banking all my life.” Lena started as a bank teller in her native Sweden as a teenager. “It was a little branch with two teller windows, and I was at one of them in the summer.”

She went to college in the city of Malmö and earned a degree in accounting. Her dad was a CPA with his own business, and her mom was a bookkeeper; numbers were in her DNA. Her parents assumed Lena would someday take over the family firm. “I had different plans, and I moved to the other side of the planet to get as far away as possible.”

The other side of the planet was San Diego, where Lena was an au pair before applying to the University of San Diego for a degree in business administration. “I really only had two choices if I wanted to stay here: either get married or go to college.”

After graduation she applied for a training program at a large L.A.-based bank. “I was one of 10 applicants out of 1,000 who made it into their training program.” Eighteen months later the bank placed her in their media department. She was tasked with landing deals lending money to major television, cable, and newspaper companies.

There weren’t many other women in the room. “It’s not just that the banking side is male-heavy,” she says, “the clientele is, too.”

In those early days, Lena was brought along to meetings mostly as a token, assigned the silent role of She Who Takes Notes. “I certainly wasn’t the negotiator.”

Sometimes after work they’d all go out for drinks, and then her male co-workers would make a spontaneous decision: “Let’s go to a strip joint!” WOO-HOO!

This put Lena in a difficult position. “Do I want to be part of that?” she would ask herself. On the other hand, “Do I want to be recognized by the team?” She decided that if she didn’t go, she wouldn’t move up.

So she went. More than once.

“I remember the first time, and it was so awkward,” Lena recalls. Cigar and cigarette smoke filled the club, and it made her ill. Strippers sat down and struck up conversations with her during their breaks. “What am I doing here?” she wondered. But Lena also realized these women “were kind human beings.”

Like her, they were trying to make a living in a man’s world. She understood.

So Lena continued tagging along. “I would just do it, because that’s what you have to do to get ahead, right?” Except she wasn’t really getting ahead.

Frustrated and Insecure

Male colleagues at the bank were being promoted ahead of Lena, and she felt incredibly frustrated. Women weren’t even invited to go golfing with the deal teams — “We weren’t male, it was as simple as that.”

She was even told that she might not get promoted because her husband is African American. “It was really hard.”

Wait a minute…

I ask her if someone actually said that about her husband. “Yes,” she replies. “Are you gonna go to HR?” she asks rhetorically. “Well, what’s HR gonna do?”

All of these experiences started to erode Lena’s confidence. She began to feel that “Because I’m not male, I’m not good enough.” She says those doubts held her back for years.

And then, a wake-up call.

A Raise… and a Realization

“Banking is very title-driven,” Lena tells me. To have importance, to make money, to close deals, you have to either be a Senior Vice President or an Executive Vice President.

While Lena was “merely” a VP, she watched as three guys who’d graduated from the training program a year ahead of her rise to the rank of SVP. Lena figured it would be her turn the following year.

A year passed. Nothing happened.

“I finally went to my boss, and I said, ‘Look, this doesn’t sit well with me. What is it that they are doing that I haven’t been doing?’”

Her boss asked her, “When’s the last time you thought of something that maybe we could do differently?”

Lena was speechless. “I didn’t know what to say.”

Lena’s manager then pointed out that the guys who’d been promoted “weren’t afraid of coming up with new business ideas, new industries that we should be lending to, different things that we should be doing, even new products.” And the guys made sure everyone knew about it. “I don’t think there was a single woman who did that.”

It made Lena realize how little she trusted herself. “I had ideas, but I was so afraid to speak up.” She feared rejection. The men did not.

She tells me that her boss’s question — “When’s the last time you thought of something?” — was the biggest epiphany of her career.

Things soon changed.

“I actually got promoted to SVP during maternity leave,” she laughs. Perhaps the bank was afraid she wouldn’t come back after her “wake-up call.“

But Lena did come back, and with a new attitude, partly because she’d given birth to a baby girl. “It made me realize, ‘You’re not just doing this for you. You’ve got to set an example for your daughter, and you’ve got to help change things and open doors.’”

No More Strip Clubs

The next time a team leader suggested they all go to a strip club, Lena told him, “This is not what I want to do, and I don’t need to do it.”

She began bringing millions of dollars into the bank on her own, her portfolio grew, and she built her own team. “I made it, and some of those who told me I wouldn’t, didn’t make it to leadership.”

Lena’s Lessons:

— You have to believe in yourself, and you have to self-promote. “Your male counterparts do it all the time and they don’t think twice about it.”

— You can’t be afraid of being told “no,” especially when it comes to money or titles. Just by asking, management understands that you want more.

— Make sure the company knows now what job you want in the future. “You want to be thought of for the next position when that position is not even available. That’s how you get ahead.”

— Think beyond your department. When Lena wanted to quit due to burnout, her boss pulled out an organizational chart, not just for their department but for the entire bank. “He goes, ‘Well, there are spots here, here, here and here. What are you interested in?’” She’d never considered another department. She stayed with the bank, but moved to a new area. It’s a lesson she tells her own team: “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what it is that you want to do.”

By the way, Lena’s baby girl is now 20 years old and in college. She’s majoring in economics, and she wants to become a banker.

Okay, be honest, is going to strip clubs still a thing when celebrating business deals? Join the conversation below, or discreetly email jane@janewells.com if you’re “commenting for a friend.” 😉

Meantime, from strip clubs to sainthood, I’m midway through my 500-mile pilgrimage in northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago. Find out how I’m doing by following me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Cover image by GeorgePeters/Getty Images