Today, I lead a Fortune 500 financial services company with more than 2 million clients. Over the course of a 40-year career, I’ve had the chance to help guide organizations through periods of growth and transformation.
What’s striking to me is how many of the most important lessons I learned didn’t come later in life. They came during my very first job as a dental hygienist at a practice in West Salem, Wisconsin. At the time, I didn’t think of it as the start of a career path. It was just a way to do good work and help people.
A practical choice
In my family, everyone seemed to have a clear direction. My older sister was artistic. My brother was going to continue the family farm. I was still figuring it out.
My dad came home from a dentist appointment one day and said, almost casually, that I should consider dental hygiene. It was practical work, he said, good pay, steady demand, something you could count on. That was where my career began.
And it taught me a few things that have stayed with me.
The value of trust
Early on, I had a patient, Edward, who was clearly terrified. He had never had his teeth cleaned before and it showed. I remember realizing very quickly that what I knew how to do technically wasn’t enough. If Edward didn’t trust me, it didn’t matter how skilled I was. I had to slow down. Listen. Help him feel comfortable before anything else.
That’s a lesson I’ve carried into every role since. You can have expertise, but if people don’t trust you, it doesn’t go very far.
Dental hygiene also taught me discipline. It’s detailed work. You can’t rush it, and you can’t skip steps. People are counting on you to get it right. That kind of consistency and doing what you said you would do, the way you said you would do it, builds trust over time.
A love of learning
I also discovered something about myself in that job. I realized I love learning. Even while I was in that program, I was already thinking about what might come next. That led me back to college for accounting, then to law school—paying my way by continuing to work as a hygienist—and eventually into roles I hadn’t planned for.
Looking back, it seems like a clear progression. It didn’t feel that way at the time.
That experience shaped how I think about careers and leadership. You don’t always see how things connect in the moment. Sometimes you’re just building skills that will matter later.
It also shaped how I think about success.
There’s a tendency to separate service from business, as if they’re different things. My first job taught me they’re not. If you help people, if you listen, follow through and do what you say, the rest tends to follow.
I started in a dentist’s office. I didn’t have a road map beyond that. But I learned how to build trust, how to be disciplined in my work, and how to keep learning. Even now, those lessons have stayed with me more than anything else.
My First Job is a recurring series in which prominent business leaders share what their first job was and what they learned from it.