“Pioneers?” Mary asked, as she noticed the language confusion, “well, at least we will be pioneers in something.”

Fast forward to November 2007. I am in a vacant sales office in downtown Chicago, on the phone with my mentor, John Lothian. John is a journalist-turned-futures broker and I am interviewing him for a story. He publishes a daily newsletter that I’ve read ever since I started working in capital markets. He collects headlines of the day and emails them to readers along with his commentary. He says what he thinks and isn’t afraid of how the industry will react. I like that about him.

When the subject of industry pioneers came up in our discussion, John said to me, “You know how you can tell who a pioneer is? It’s the one with the bull’s eye on his back.”

I met John Lothian for the first time at the Futures Industry Association’s annual expo last year. He was an attendee and I was working at a booth in the exhibit hall. It was the year he participated in a pie throwing contest to benefit the Boy Scouts of America. Since John is so well-known in the futures industry, I felt like meeting him was similar to meeting a contestant from a reality TV show. I knew all about him, but he didn’t know about me.

After the introduction, I pretended like we were old friends, and followed up by contacting him for quotes or industry background. He is a powerful voice in the industry and I so thought he would be a good person to keep in touch with.

Last week, I had lunch with John at his office in the old Chicago Board of Trade building. He is launching a new website called Marketswiki, which is a Wikipedia for the capital markets. Over lunch, he explained to me how technology is advancing journalism to new levels. Information is made available in split seconds thanks to the internet. In some scenarios, his daily newsletter is old news by the time it hits a recipient’s inbox. With this in mind, he has launched a new website where financial news is constantly being updated. He hopes the online financial encyclopedia will become an industry standard.

To further the exposure of his new venture, John created a Marketswiki profile for me. I felt like he was putting together my resumé as he trolled around the internet and uploaded my freelance articles, marketing work and then, my travelogues. I was nervous when he started reading the poetry I wrote during my travels in Vietnam. I always knew that stuff was on the internet, because I posted it there. However; in my mind, it wasn’t the same internet that also published my financial articles. It was embarrassing having him read a poem I wrote while I was going through a breakup and traveling through Southeast Asia. It didn’t faze him though. He included the link on my profile and continued his Google search for past pieces I’ve written.

After I finished eating my lunch, I stopped to think about why I had sought out John as my mentor. In our very first conversation, it was apparent to me that he was a pioneer in the financial industry. He saw a need for up-to-the-second news feeds and made them widely available for everyone in the capital markets. He took his “slash role” as a journalist/futures broker and ventured into a career where he could manage both.

As a writer with various interests and a diverse background, I too hope to become a “slash” professional. I admire that Lothian was able to combine both of his interests into a job that no one had thought of before, but which provided an important service to the financial community. I also realize why I am drawn to John as a mentor. I too want to be a pioneer. In fact, a woman in Hanoi already thinks I am.

Lina is a bit of an anomaly among first year MBA students at Harvard Business School (HBS).

Attending Harvard on an academic fellowship, Lina already has a summer position lined up with a prestigious investment bank. So, while her classmates are scurrying to presentations and networking events for summer employment, she is thinking farther ahead about her long term employment prospects. “It’s tempting to think the decision is still two years off,” she says, “but I know I have to start making some decisions now.”

Lina worked in finance for several years after college, taking a position in New York at one of the largest global investment banks. Her decision to pursue a private sector finance job surprised her friends and family, who knew she aspired to work in public service and give back to the community in her native Jamaica. When she visited her home country over vacation, she endured some teasing about selling out and becoming “part of the system.” She admits that she had a hard time coming to terms with her decision, saying, “It took about a year for me to stop apologizing for myself.”

Although she eventually resolved her self-doubt about working in investment banking, in business school, Lina decided to refocus her sights on social entrepreneurship in developing countries. Working for a bank and attending HBS have offered Lina the credibility and professional growth opportunities she feels she will need in the future to get ahead in the non-profit world. Although a wide array of supposedly “safe” career options are being paraded through the halls of school every day in the form or on-campus career fairs and recruiting events sponsored by banks, consulting firms, and publicly-traded companies, Lina says that she does not feel the urge to “rack up any more medals.”

Many MBAs talk about going into finance for a few years, then pursuing their public interest dreams with a fuller bank account. But Lina does not want to wait until later in her career to pursue her passions. “Coming from Jamaica, I feel like a Third World citizen,” she explains. “I’m interested in bringing capital back to the places that don’t have it.” After graduation, she would like to find employment with a smaller, entrepreneurial project in a developing country.

Landing a job with a start-up company in the developing world poses unique challenges for an HBS student. While the HBS recruitment process designed to place an MBA candidate in project management in San Francisco or an associate position in Dubai, Lina’s particular goals will require a lot more legwork on her part. The public sector opportunities she seeks will not show up on campus, ready to wine and diner her, and pitch their programs to her. She knows she needs to seek out contacts in emerging capital markets, and build up her network of entrepreneurs in developing countries. This summer, she is considering splitting her summer to work abroad for part of the time, in order to gain the type of experience she needs. It won’t be easy, she knows, but Lina is passionate about public service and feels driven to use her skills and education to benefit society.

Plus, she’s always got that investment-banking career to fall back on.

Last summer, at one New York investment bank, a male executive dropped into a luncheon for women employees and asked their advice about a problem. He explained that didn’t really understand what motivated female investment bankers, because they “seemed to want different things” than their male counterparts.

While this comment was met with a range of responses from puzzlement to hostility to efforts to understand, Hannah, a Harvard Business School (HBS) second year MBA candidate said, “I understand what he means.”Hannah sacrificed hours of sleep and made major adjustments to her personal life in order to win an offer as a summer associate at this investment bank.

But when she realized that all of the women in her group were unmarried (except one), she couldn’t help but wonder: was there something about investment banking that kept women from marrying and having children?It was an important question to Hannah, who someday wants a family but also wants to work in investment banking after obtaining her MBA, but nothing she heard at the women’s luncheon that day could give her the answer.

Hanna wanted to raise this delicate subject with her co-workers, but didn’t know how. “You can’t just walk up to somebody and ask them why they don’t have children,” she said. “Maybe they never found the right person. Maybe they never wanted children. Maybe they desperately wanted children, but were unable to have them.”

However innocently she intended the question, Hannah knew that it could open up old wounds and come across as inappropriate. Still, she wished that there was a way to facilitate frank and open dialogue on this issue with her female colleagues.

Women in their mid-twenties are often in the process of building foundations. A woman who wants a family may want to find time to meet a compatible partner. A woman who wants to climb the corporate ranks may focus on developing relationships with her company’s executives, instead of prioritizing her personal life. A woman who eventually wants to transition into another field may need to seek out different opportunities within her firm.

The paths to these goals is often not as clearly delineated for women as they are for men, and given that the paths and goals of women are as varied as the women themselves, young women often do not know where to turn for advice.

Hannah was fortunate enough to find a mentor in the only married female associate in her group. Her mentor’s advice on the realities of dating as a woman in banking have helped Hannah work through her concerns about balancing her personal life with work and crystallize her short term career goals. When, at the end of the summer, Hannah received offers in both her mentor’s department and an all-male department she had previously worked in, she chose her mentor’s department, in large part because of the relationship they had built.

Finding the right mentor can be just as important to a young woman’s personal and professional development as finding the right job. But it can be difficult to make the right match. How do you approach mentoring relationships in your company? What do you do when the women you mentor have goals and values that do not align with your own?

Last year’s event took place around the time that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced they would be acquiring the Chicago Board of Trade. Craig Donahue, the Chief Executive Officer of the CME, was the featured guest at the event. I would never have recognized him if it wasn’t for his entourage. People gathered around him and he spoke for about 15 minutes. I can’t tell you what it was about since I didn’t speak his language. I took sips of my drink, laughed when everyone else did and clapped when he was finished.

This year was quite different. The venue was the same; a stuffy old boys club where you find men sitting in big leather chairs, smoking cigars and swigging scotch. I played the female card. I wore high-heeled boots with a gray dress (because gray is the new black) and walked into the room like I owned it.

I shook hands with the Marketing guy, tapped that CEO on the shoulder. I was a business card slut, I gave it to everyone. I mingled with the Advertising exec for awhile, said hi to that CIO and then walked to the bar for a drink. I looked around the room while I waited for the bartender to pour my vodka and I noticed that everyone was waiting for this year’s featured guest; Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley.

I recognized him the minute he walked into the room. He looked older in person than in pictures. When he took the podium, he talked about the idea of a global community; one in which we break down barriers by attending Hemisphere Conferences and inviting teachers from Russia, India and China to work in our schools.

I’m no neophyte when it comes to travel; I have friends in Vietnam on my speed dial, but I was impressed. I wanted a picture of him to put on my bookshelf. I pressed myself through the crowd and interrupted a conversation he was having. He put his arm around my waist and the cameraman snapped a shot. I was pushed out of the way and Mayor Daley continued his conversation.

It all happened so fast. A member of the Mayor’s entourage gave me written instructions for picking my picture up at City Hall. I took the piece paper and walked over to the bar. I was star-struck, breathless and proud of myself for getting what I wanted. I ordered myself another vodka (on the rocks this time, with blue cheese olives). I saw the Project Manager near the shrimp quesadillas and walked over to him and said hello. In that moment, I felt like I owned the room.