Megan Brown isn't the first woman to get pregnant and exitcorporate life, frustrated and finished with the “rat race.” Butshe is among the minority to have climbed the ranksof Wall Street –accepting, and actually loving, being a woman in the dog-eat-dogworld of a not-so-female-friendly industry – before giving into herneed to move on, and out.

During a recent conversation inManhattan, Meganspoke with me about her baptism by fire in the finance industry.She started on the floor of the New York Stockexchange as a trader working for “a really tough cookie.” Her bossspared no one from his foul language and screaming rants. “It wasbrutal. I was yelled at from seven in the morning until the bellrang at four. I would be on the train home and I would cry everynight – EVERY night.” After 18 months of a tortuously steeplearning curve, and with her boss's encouragement, she moved toBear Stearns. “What a difference! It was so professional; no one'syelling at me.” Megan held numerous jobs within the corporation,ultimately becoming the global head of third-party distribution.She considered herself a lifer, believing she would be with BearStearns forever (of course, that was before it imploded). At onepoint she recalls asking her boss why there weren't more women –and there were hardly any – his response was, “Honestly, Megan, Iwould hire them, but I don't even get any resumes.”

Listening to Megan's stories – and lamenting on my ownexperiences in the finance world – it's no surprise why most womenwant no part of such aggressive, fast-paced, male-dominatedorganizations. But Megan thrived on the challenges. “I didn't takeit personally, you just kind of felt like the men were weak.” Infact, she approached the testosterone-enriched environment as astudy in sociology:

“My girlfriend, Jenn (who's also in the business) and I, we usedto call it the Man Circus. You have all the empty suits that arebringing anything to the table that they can. And they all use abevy of analogies like, 'We all need to be rowing in the samedirection' and 'picking the low-hanging fruit.' You can'tunderstand anything they're saying, but all the other men thinkthey sound brilliant. Jenn and I used to sit through thesemeetings together and just look at them thinking, “There's an emptysuit sitting up there with nice hair.'”

Megan thinks she succeeded on Wall Street partly because she isthe daughter of a race car driver. She was raised like a boy, couldchange a tire by the time she was seven, and was taught not to cry.“It's a skill set I don't think I ever would have developedotherwise.” At work, “I was willing to be as male as I needed to beto succeed.” And that includes a repertoire of seriously dirtyjokes. It was part of the job. And so was traveling. During the first five weeks back to work after maternity leave(after Bear Stearns, she landed at J.P. Morgan) Megan was on theroad more than she was at home. Read the complete forbes.com/forbeswoman article.