Nov. 12, 2010
Shelley Simon was determined to be among the first women undergraduate students who enrolled at Notre Dame in the fall of 1972. As the result of her stellar performance in high school, she earned a spot as one of the 125 freshman women who took their place along with 250 upperclass incoming transfer students that comprised the very first group of Notre Dame women undergraduates.
Known then by her maiden name of Shelley Muller, she was equally determined to be among the first four-year graduating class of women at Notre Dame, but her chosen field of study – architecture – was a five-year program. So Simon accelerated her curriculum, while still finding time to serve as a varsity cheerleader, to allow her to receive her Notre Dame degree with that very first group of four-year female graduates in May 1976.
“I wanted to be a pioneer,” she reflects. “I started realizing about midway through college that, `Oh yeah, some day, this is going to be really special.'”
Of course, there were plenty of special moments during Simon’s four years at Notre Dame, including a chemistry class with Dr. Emil T. Hoffman that blossomed into a life-long friendship, meeting her future husband, cheering for the 1973 national championship football team, and sharing a celebratory New Year’s moment with Notre Dame President – and champion of coeducation – Rev. Theodore Hesburgh in the aftermath of the 1973 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.
Simon didn’t give up her trailblazing ways once she had her diploma in hand.
“While we women were on Our Lady’s campus, we were treated as oddities at first,” Simon recalls. “But She taught us well, oh so well … so well, in fact, that we did not understand the limitations of society’s mindset when we graduated.”
The field of architecture provided plenty of opportunities for Simon to forge new paths. Between a tight economy and a still-strong ambivalence toward women in professions like architecture, Simon’s best option for her first “real job” out of Notre Dame was an intern at an architectural firm, paying $3.00 per hour. Simon had earned $2.50 an hour as a janitor at a public school during the summer before her freshman year at Notre Dame.
Several years later, as Simon prepared to leave the firm when her husband, 1974 Notre Dame civil engineering graduate Craig Simon, took a job in another state, her boss remarked that he would have “rather she got a divorce than leave the firm.”
After more than a decade as a highly-respected architect, Simon made her case to become a partner to the four male partners of the architectural firm at which she then worked. Not only was she rebuffed, but she was ridiculed, despite the fact that all four men conceded that she was already handling every task and role within the firm as well as they did themselves.
So Simon decided to start her own business.
She joined forces with a woman whose expertise in interior design she had relied upon for many years, parlaying talent, determination and $400 into a thriving business.
As Simon navigated uncharted waters, she found herself leaning on many of the women who had shared her brand-new journey at Notre Dame.
“When we get together we laugh, because we cried at graduation because we never thought we’d see each other again,” says Simon, who was the first woman ever to hold the presidencies of the Mid-Missouri and State of Missouri chapters of the American Institute of Architects.
Instead, the women who comprised Notre Dame’s first-ever class of freshmen undergraduates continued to support and encourage one another through professional and personal challenges.
“Those of us who owned businesses made our own little retreat,” relates Simon. “It was just kind of a natural thing.”
Twenty years after launching her business, Simon and her second business partner, Bil Oswald, had built the largest architectural firm in Central Missouri, with 16 employees and nearly two million dollars in annual revenue.
But pioneering was still in Simon’s blood.
Even as she and Oswald were enjoying great professional success and acclaim, Simon began to sense something pulling her in a different -yet somehow familiar – direction.
As she watched her daughter, Kelly (Notre Dame Class of ’08), retrace many of her own paths as a Notre Dame undergraduate, Simon was moved anew by the sense of purpose and service she recognized among Kelly and Kelly’s peers.
“It became pretty clear about five years ago that I was interested in really giving more to the community,” explains Simon, who already had a staggering portfolio of community involvement, including as a founding board member of the award-winning Central Missouri Club of Notre Dame.
“I do attribute that in large part to getting closer to Notre Dame, to the Notre Dame students and alumni and the strong call to service that has always been a big part of Notre Dame,” she says.
Still seeking to discern precisely where she was being led, Simon had already sold her ownership interest in Simon Oswald Associates and was working part-time for the firm in June 2010 when she had a chance conversation that led her to become the executive director of Greater Missouri Leadership Foundation, an organization with a mission to educate and inspire women to make a difference.
Despite her very personal and very real experiences with gender bias in the workplace, Simon had always seen herself first and foremost as an architect and a business owner – not as a female architect and a female business owner.
Before pursuing and ultimately accepting the position, Simon had to satisfy herself that the Greater Missouri Leadership Foundation (www.greatermo.org) was meeting a significant need.
“Whenever I’m asked to take on a role that focuses on women, the first thing I ask myself is why men are excluded,” explains Simon.
Once she had investigated, Simon became convinced that not every professional woman across Missouri enjoys the same type of environment to which she’s grown accustomed in her long-time home of Columbia – largely free of gender discrimination in business circles.
So now, Simon devotes herself to helping women experience the same kind of professional and personal success and fulfillment she has attained for herself over the past three decades.
“What I would like to do for the organization is to elevate its presence by involving women leaders in conversations about important things in the state of Missouri,” says Simon.
“I want for us to be involved not just at the peak of leadership of their career, but also through the generations and through the steps in a career,” she elaborates. “I think there is a way to engage in this conversation starting at a younger age, and perhaps extending through an older age.”
Underneath all of Simon’s achievement and commitment to women is an equally strong commitment to her family – Craig, Kelly and son Pete, currently a PGA teaching professional at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles. Already, Kelly has devoted herself to improving the plight of those around her, spending a year as an intern with LifeWorks (www.lifeworksusa.org) and then working for Jesuit Volunteer Corps (www.jesuitvolunteers.org).
“My three greatest passions are first, family; second, making a difference; and third, helping others succeed,” says Simon, who is a 10-year member of the Chief Executives Network, a network of architecture CEOs who study business trends and provide peer-to-peer business advice.
Interestingly Simon sees a strong link between her many achievements in a male-dominated profession and the strong men in her life – her father, her husband and male friends she made at Notre Dame. Simon doesn’t believe that for women to have opportunities and to succeed that they must view men as adversaries.
“The roots of that came from two places – one from my father, but the other place was Notre Dame, where we learned how to excel,” she says.
Simon clearly learned those lessons very well, and it’s equally clear that she’s become very adept at passing along those lessons to her own children and other young people – especially women – that she encounters.
The pioneer has become a pioneer-maker.
-ND-