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When Jean Head Sisco was an executive trainee at the Marshall Field department store in Chicago in 1947, a couture saleswoman gave her some advice. "Always wear a hat. A hat disarms men, and they won't ask you to pour coffee or take notes." Sisco still wears hats. But her many accomplishments make one thing clear: It wasn't the hat that mattered but the head beneath it.
Sisco always wanted a career in business. Encouraged to enter retailing, she came to work for Woodies in 1950 and rose through the ranks to become one of its top five executives - vice president for personnel and labor relations - at a time when few women made it into executive suites of their own.
She was known as such an effective manager that when she left Woodies to open her own consulting business, her first client was the American Retail Federation. After Sisco started handling international trade issues for the federation, individual suppliers began asking her to do the same for them. Now her international consulting business, Sisco Associates, is thriving.
Community involvement has long been a major part of Sisco's life. She was the first woman member of the Board of Trade and an early civil rights advocate. She campaigned for vocational education to teach not just a trade but communications skills and job readiness and was one of the first civic leaders to call for public support for daycare.
The first woman on several corporate boards, Sisco believes real advances for women are made quietly. That's one way she rose to the top: "I lit one candle, and when that took flame, I lit another."
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