There’s been more progress in the atmosphere for women in finance over the last three or four years than there has been in the last 30.

Born and raised in Manhattan, Noreen Doyle studied mathematics at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx, then an all-women’s liberal arts school. During college, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, she worked for a New York brokerage firm and got a chance to see what life was like on Wall Street. After college, while working as an assistant to two portfolio managers at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, now known as JPMorgan Chase, she was also taking business courses at night at New York University.

Paul D. Paganucci, a well-known Dartmouth and Tuck alumnus and prominent investment banker who served as associate dean and professor of business administration at Tuck starting in the 70s, was then a partner at the firm. Paganucci knew that Doyle was taking business classes at night and he told her, “You should set aside two years and go to business school. Borrow the money if you need to because it’ll be the best decision you ever make.”

So, she did just that. She applied to Tuck, which had gone co-ed in 1968. When she matriculated in 1972, she was one of four women in her 120-person class. “Dartmouth was not a very welcoming attitude for women back then, but Tuck gave me an opportunity I wouldn’t have had otherwise and the confidence to go after a career in finance,” Doyle says. “It gave me access to the Tuck network, one of the strongest in the world. While the finance courses were extremely useful, some of the courses I didn’t at the time think were that useful, like organization behavior, turned out to be very useful.”

After graduating in 1974, she knew she wanted to go back to Wall Street, armed with her MBA. “I got a banking job that I couldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t gone to Tuck,” she says. That led to an 18-year career at Bankers Trust Company.

Her first job with Bankers Trust was covering corporations and financial institutions in the Southwest. Then in her late twenties, when they offered to move her to Houston, Texas, she said yes. “It was baptism by fire,” Doyle recalls. “The heat and humidity were not welcoming. I had never owned a car in my life, but I bought my first car and learned the oil and gas business.”

She eventually moved back to New York to work for Bankers Trust still in the energy division, working with companies like Exxon and Mobil. Over the years, she transitioned into a role on the liability side of the bank and moved to London to serve as head of syndication for Europe.

When a recruiter called about a job at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Doyle left Bankers Trust to work at EBRD as their head of syndication, then head of credit, and finally head of risk management. From 2001 to 2005, she became the first vice president of the EBRD. Doyle worked alongside businesses and governments throughout Europe, including Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union through the Russian economic crisis.

She has served as a member of Newmont Mining Corporation’s Board of Directors since 2005, as well as on the boards of several other companies, including 12 years as board chair of Credit Suisse. She also became the first woman to chair the British Banker’s Association in its 96-year history. She has spoken publicly about the lack of women in leadership roles and on corporate boards. “I think finance and banking are very good opportunities for women. You’re working with intelligent people,” Doyle says. “The culture of investment banks post-crisis has changed. There’s been more progress in the atmosphere for women in finance over the last three or four years than there has been in the last 30.”

Doyle now splits her time between New York and Connecticut, and although she’s certainly not retiring completely, she is giving up some of her board duties. “I’d like to take some time off,” she says. “I love to travel. I love the opera. I’d like to make more time for those things.”

50 Years of Women at Tuck