From the classroom to the corner office

Going from Catholic nun and teacher to president and CEO of a $5.7 billion bank is a monumental leap. But Rosemarie Greco found that teaching school is not so different from managing a business. For many years, two insights have guided her transformation and climb up the corporate ladder: that both women and men have the ability to shape their professional destinies, and that there is unlimited power in the fusion of organizational vision and individual fulfillment. Hired in 1968 by Fidelity Bank in Philadelphia as a secretary, Greco was determined that every day on the job she would learn something new about banking. She took careful notes and stored them in a three-ring binder that soon became the bank's official training manual. This led to a promotion to the training department of human resources, putting Greco on a career path she had never envisioned. Along the way, Greco met obstacles, such as a boss who put his own name on her new ideas--a boss whom Greco later fired after she was promoted above him. She helped revise Fidelity's salary-grading system when the bank faced a sex discrimination class-action suit. At the same time, slotting employees into the newly created job grades opened Greco's eyes to the fact that the work of men was valued much more highly than that of women at the bank. When Greco was promoted to director of human resources--and later as CEO--she worked to change that discriminatory corporate culture until Fidelity Bank became one of the top organizations in the country for women to work in.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)