Janet Hanson met John Whitehead on a chartered sailboat when she was a senior in college. It was a trip that would change the course of her life forever. As one of the most respected senior partners at Goldman Sachs, the investment banking powerhouse, Whitehead urged Hanson to go to business school and join him at the firm. With zero interest in doing either, Hanson graduated from college and returned to her job at the local golf club. Realizing that her golf game was improving but her life was going nowhere, Hanson got her MBA and joined Goldman Sachs as a twenty-four-year-old associate in Fixed Income Sales.
Fiercely competitive, Hanson would eventually earn the awe and admiration of the trading desks by becoming one of the biggest revenue producers in the division. When she married one of her colleagues, they became the ultimate power couple. After the marriage fizzled, work became Hanson's obsession and before long, she became her ex-husband's boss as the first female sales manager in the firm's history. Still managing a full account load, Hanson put her foot on the gas and left it there. Whenever she felt depressed, she spent lavishly on cars, clothes, and expensive trips for her family.
Finally realizing that she'd hit the wall and the glass ceiling, Hanson impulsively quit her job. Over the next six years, Hanson remarried, had two kids, and came back to Goldman in a vain attempt to resurrect her floundering career.
In 1994, Hanson ripped a page right out of Goldman's playbook and launched her own mutual fund company with a handful of ex-GS professionals. Broad Street tells the story of Hanson's tumultuous career ride at Goldman Sachs and later, how she parlayed every lesson learned into her own wildly successful, multi-billion dollar asset management firm.
