Six Cornell University seniors, all women, went to New York City this past summer hoping to learn how to crack Wall Street's infamous glass ceiling — that invisible, impermeable surface their mothers merely scratched.

Unlike their mothers, however, they were lucky enough to have as mentors a group of women, many of them Cornell alumnae, who are already established in the business world. The 10-week experience taught the students rule number one: networking is the name of the game. And rule number two: if you think you already know all you need to know about networking, you're wrong.

The members of the group are Marina Choumanova and Paige Goodman, both in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), Ka Yee Tom and Frances Ng, both in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Caroline Lynch and Andrea Wasserman in the College of Human Ecology.

The initiative was organized by Sally Strachan, a former banking executive who is now with media magnate Chris Whittle's Edison Schools Inc. Strachan's favorite color has been Cornell red ever since her daughter, Sara, enrolled at the School of Hotel Administration in 1993. She is a member of both the Cornell University Council and the Financial Women's Association (FWA), a national group of female professionals. So when she became head of the FWA's Wall Street Exchange Program last year, it was only natural for her to make sure Cornell women were included. "The program tries to encourage women who are juniors and seniors to go into financial services," she explained, "and gives them the skill set they'll need to attain a Wall Street job when they graduate."

This year the program included 32 students from 19 top-tier colleges — among them the six women from Cornell — who had summer jobs in finance and accounting at such firms as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and TIAA-CREF. More important, Strachan and her colleagues

matched the students with women executives and organized weekly gatherings, hosted by the companies, where the students got to talk with the people who do the actual hiring, and learned, among other things, how to network (Hint: you can never have too many business cards).

Lynch, who is from Irvine, Calif., commented: "On day one, Sally introduced us to people who taught us this essential skill that you can't learn from a book." Lynch began the summer with two rolodexes of networking contacts and ended with five, which surely must break some record, Strachan guesses.

"I'd been hesitant about going into a career on Wall Street before," added Lynch, "because I was looking for a work environment that was supportive to women, and I didn't think I'd find it there. But the women I met confirmed that there's a strong community out there. You just need to know where to look."

Lynch had a summer job in corporate strategy and finance at Lucent Technologies and joined a team scouring the globe for likely merger-and-acquisition partners. She analyzed the financial feasibility of the proposed mergers. But despite the heavy travel schedule and the company's inconvenient location — New Jersey, not Manhattan — Lynch didn't miss a single weekly gathering of the Wall Street Exchange Program students. Through the program she met Susan Ganz, whose career in corporate strategy and finance looked like one Lynch wanted to emulate. "We talked about career options and how to marry the disciplines of strategy and finance," said Lynch.

Lynch, who hopes to work either on Wall Street or in management consulting when she graduates, is now bulking up with graduate strategy and finance courses at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Choumanova, who is from Ossining, N.Y., but grew up in Bulgaria, worked in the executive compensation department of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter as part of the exchange program. Her job was to look at industry trends and compare Morgan Stanley with the rest of the market. She liked the experience so much that she'll return during winter intersession. "I got to see for the first time what it was like to work for a big corporation and apply some of the things I've learned in ILR, such as labor market surveys," she said. She also became friends with mentor Debbie Siegel, a College of Human Ecology alumna at Morgan Stanley. The two met often for lunch and dinner and kept up a daily e-mail correspondence.

"She was a great mentor," said Choumanova. "She answered all my questions about Morgan Stanley, and she has promised to help with my career planning."

Tom, who is from New York City, worked this summer for Distinguished Programs, a wholesale insurance company, and wants to go into corporate accounting when she graduates. Ng, from Brooklyn, N.Y., worked as an actuarial intern for TIAA-CREF and wants to become

an actuary after she completes her studies. Goodman, from Queens, N.Y., worked in training and development for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and hopes to find a job in equity research or sales and marketing after graduation. And Wasserman, from Massapequa, N.Y., worked in markets infrastructure at J.P. Morgan and hopes to join the real estate division of an investment banking firm following graduation.

In addition to teaching the students networking skills and linking them with mentors, Strachan teamed with Judy Wesalo Temel '75, chair of Cornell Alumnae Network, and Cornell's regional office in New York City to hold a July reception for the students and a group of Cornell alumnae working in finance in New York: Cheryl Boyer '87, Jennifer Herskowitz '88, Carol Leister '84, Kena Evans Thompson '93 and Strachan's daughter Sara '97.

With the skill set they acquired, plus perseverance, luck and those hefty rolodexes, Strachan predicts that the six Cornell seniors who went to Wall Street this past summer should shatter that glass ceiling in no time at all.