“Young women have no idea how their lives are going to progress,” Midge Campbell-Thomas tells me. “You rarely progress right up the chain – in 30 years of work, you may not have the chance to move up.”
But Midge has. Her 30-year financial services career began as a teller, and last December she was named market president for Bank of America – the face of the institution’s work in Ventura and Santa Barbara – while continuing on a national level as chief operating officer and overseeing business operations, quality control, and exam and issues management for the bank. “When I started working the role models were men,” she says. “I didn’t see women executives.”
Midge was born in Arizona, and when she was growing up the opportunities for education weren’t there. So her goal was to get out. Her oldest sister had moved to Santa Barbara to attend UCSB, and Midge was inspired to come to the west coast as well. She majored in Biology at Santa Clara University because she wanted to do genetic research. “I started to work in a lab after graduation, but it wasn’t a good environment for me,” she shares. “I’m an extrovert.”