When Jennifer M. Lee was growing up in Dayton, OH, a quiet minister’s daughter, she never imagined that one day she’d be a towering Manhattan banker with a dry sense of humor and an insatiable travel bug. “I always wanted to be a petite cheerleader who was cute and confident in size five shoes and had a boyfriend or two,” reveals Jennifer, 37, mom to Reid, 10 months. Instead, she topped out at six-one when she was 14 years old, didn’t know what to do with her lanky limbs and tried hard to blend in. She was, to put it simply, miserable. “I was extraordinarily self-conscious,” she says. “Out of complete mortification, I would tell people back then that I was five-foot-twelve.”

To help Jennifer see that her uniqueness wasn’t a liability, her parents took every opportunity to introduce her to statuesque, proud women. “Being tall and noticeably different gave Jennifer empathy for those who are marginalized by society for not fitting the mold,” says her mom. Jennifer also found solace in her dad’s perspective on the world: “He told me that someday I would think my height was a good thing,” she says. “He was right.”

These days, confident and self-possessed, Jennifer enjoys slipping into three-inch heels for work and stepping out with her six-foot-four-inch husband, Jeff Chapski. “Now I laugh at tall jokes,” she says. “I’m thankful that I’m different.” She calls her awkward years “defining,” because that’s when she learned to accept herself. “It wasn’t as though I could hide my height,” she offers with a laugh. “It’s the first thing you notice about me.”

Jennifer’s imposing stature certainly hasn’t hurt her professional life. As a managing director at the Neuberger
Berman division of Lehman Brothers in New York City, her job is as formidable as she is. She oversees the day-to-day business and management of the office’s 21 senior wealth advisors who serve the New York region, as well as nearly $8 billion in client assets. It’s a position that involves working with clients to build strategies that keep all aspects of their finances in sync. Her usual day includes meeting with clients, their attorneys and their accountants, along with attending business-planning discussions with her team. “What I love about my job is that the story changes every day,” Jennifer says. “There’s always something interesting happening in the global capital markets. There’s always something to learn. I enjoy helping clients solve a problem, make a decision and feel confident in that decision.”

An Accidental Career
Key to Jennifer’s success is having confidence in her own opinion as much as in the facts. Her decision-making
philosophy is to arrive at the best solution she can with the information at hand and then, whatever the outcome, let it go.

Surprisingly for someone as decisive as Jennifer, she pretty much fell into her career. She graduated from Barnard College in 1993 having absolutely no idea what she’d do with her life. It was a career services counselor who suggested she interview with the investment banking firm JP Morgan. Jennifer didn’t feel a particular affinity for the field, but it was the tail end of a recession and times were tough economically, and she was determined to hone some skills. “I had no vision that I would go into finance and stay for my career,” she says. But to her amazement, she found a great fit at JP Morgan. “I discovered I liked the private client side of the business,” she recalls. She enjoyed the fast pace, too: “I would get in at 7:30 in the morning and work until 6:30 in the evening, with the phones ringing off the hook. You had to make decisions fast. I loved it.”

Jennifer stayed for seven years, leaving in 2000 to join Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where she ran sales and marketing for the firm’s portfolio advisory group. In 2004, she signed on at Lehman Brothers. One of the best aspects of the industry, Jennifer says, is that it offers women a more level playing field. “The world of investment management and asset management is one in which women can be extremely successful,” she explains. “It’s a true meritocracy. If you’re a great portfolio manager or in sales, you’re judged by what you deliver.”

And deliver she does, according to Anne Erni, chief diversity officer and managing director at Lehman Brothers. “Jennifer has an uncanny ability to look around corners and think about things that other people haven’t thought about,” says Anne, Jennifer’s colleague and collaborator at the office. “She exemplifies all that our industry demands—creativity, flexibility, analytical and problem-solving acumen and the ability to see the big picture, as well as the small components within it.”

Her Working Mom
The fast-paced world of finance in New York City is a far cry from Jennifer’s small-town upbringing in Dayton. She and her brothers, Christopher and Jonathan, were raised by her mom, Barbara, a nurse who worked in hospital education programs, and her dad, Ronald, a Lutheran minister. “Being the child of a minister means you have a very public life,” Jennifer says. “All the members of the congregation know who you are, yet you don’t know them.” Considering the times, Jennifer’s parents ran a modern household in which gender roles were less than traditional. Her mother didn’t cook, so her father did the grocery shopping and prepared all the meals. And with two working parents, says Jennifer, “we were latchkey kids at a time when that was safe. We would do our chores and look out for each other.”

She credits her parents with giving her consistent support, especially when she went away to college. Jennifer her first year at Barnard to be more than a little intimidating. “Moving from a small town to Manhattan, experiencing the broad swath of cultures—it was daunting and overwhelming,” she recalls. So much so that when she went back to Dayton for Christmas break, she begged her parents to let her stay home. They persuaded her to give college another try, explaining that sometimes the best things in life are really difficult. Armed with their encouragement, Jennifer
returned to Barnard and soon met a group of women who are—along with her husband—her “best friends in the world” to this day.

Jennifer met Jeff on a work project in 1994 when he was at JP Morgan. “He was nice to me,” she says. “I know that sounds kind of lame, but it’s true.” In addition, Jennifer was impressed by Jeff’s intelligence and discipline. He liked the confident way she carried herself. “She had a challenging assignment and handled it with ease,” he says. This mutual admiration society quickly discovered shared interests in the beach, travel, football and Bruce Springsteen. When the project wrapped, Jeff asked Jennifer out. They got married six years later.

The couple has traveled to Vietnam and Morocco—and even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Jennifer says that she’s seen many examples of Jeff’s selfless devotion over the years, but one gesture stands out: When they got back to their hotel after that challenging climb, having logged many miles and slept in a tent for days, “Jeff insisted I take the first shower,” she says. “Now that’s true chivalry, and true love.”

New Baby, New Job
Their busy travel schedule led them to put off having kids for a bit, but they were overjoyed when Reid came into the world this year. And announcing the news at work was nearly as joyful. When Jennifer learned she was pregnant and approached her bosses, the response was what she’d hoped for. “It wasn’t ‘What does this mean for your job?’ but rather ‘We’re so excited for you!’” she says. Jennifer took 12 weeks of maternity leave, having just been awarded a promotion that meant she and Jeff would move from Philadelphia to New York City upon her return to work. “We moved when Reid was six weeks old,” Jennifer says. “So when I went back to work, it was in a new home, with a new baby and a new job.”

Life at home with a newborn was an adjustment for Jennifer, who had worked nonstop for 15 years with never more than two weeks off for vacation. “I was home doing something I didn’t know how to do that is loud and needs you so constantly,” she says. “I was overwhelmed by the motherhood experience.” Even so, Jeff admires Jennifer’s “endless reserve of patience when she is dealing with Reid—and me, for that matter.”

When Jennifer returned to work, she and Jeff hired a full-time caregiver, April Burruel. On a typical day, Jennifer wakes at 6:00 a.m. so she can spend time with Reid. She lives only five blocks from her office and is at her desk at about 8:00 a.m., having already scanned her BlackBerry and the headlines of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Jeff is proud of Jennifer for setting such a strong example for their son. “Reid will grow up watching his mom excel in all her roles—mother, wife and professional woman,” he says. “He will know that Mom’s work is just as important as Dad’s work.”

The Family Business
With both Jeff, who runs his own business consulting company, and Jennifer working full-time, discussion is needed to keep the family running smoothly. “We have business meetings one or two times a week,” Jennifer says. They discuss what’s on their calendars and who’s responsible for what. They plan vacations and discuss their finances. “Running our family is a hectic business,” she says. “We like to check in about how we’re spending our time and our money.”
It was during one of these meetings that they realized one of them was often taking care of Reid to give the other a break, but they weren’t all spending time together. “We were doing shift work and not seeing each other,” says Jennifer. “So we changed that.”

Jennifer admits that some days, handling the competing interests of a young son and a high-powered career can feel like a tug-of-war with her in the middle. But ultimately it all comes together, because she gets so much satisfaction from her work. “She believes that it takes a happy parent to raise a happy child, and part of her happiness comes from the fulfillment she derives from her career,” Jeff says. What he most admires about her right now: Even though the men in the house outnumber Jennifer two to one, “she can still hold her own.”