Monday, April 21, 2025
Three women who have shaped unique and inflential careers took center stage at Glen Cove City Hall on March 3 for the fifth annual Female Firsts panel, a celebration of Women’s History Month. Hosted by City Councilwoman Marsha Silverman, the event featured Melissa Bert, Dawn Riley and Josephine Linden, all of whom shattered barriers in male-dominated fields.
From navigating the seas to leading in finance and law, the women shared their journeys, on which resilience and perseverance led to success. Their stories highlighted not only personal triumphs, but also the larger strides women have made in a wide range of careers.
Bert, a rear admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard, was the first woman to serve as judge advocate general and chief counsel. There were only 18 women — and 260 men — in her freshman class in the Coast Guard Academy. Today, women account for 40 percent of the academy’s enrollment.
Riley made history as the first American — male or female — to compete in four America’s Cups and two Whitbread Round the World Races.
She also became the first woman to manage an America’s Cup syndicate, and now leads Oakcliff Sailing in Oyster Bay.
Silverman: Who are some of the mentors that have helped you through your career?
Linden: One of the pieces of advice I give so many people is you can’t just have one mentor in life. You need to have what I call a board of directors, because different people at different times will come into it. All throughout my life, I’ve had wonderful mentors in business as well as personal.
Attach yourself to different kinds of people. To me, a mentor is somebody I can talk to about whatever it is. What’s my trouble? What’s my issue? And so I try to turn the tables and also be a mentor to other people.
Silverman: What’s something you know now that you wish you had known before you started your career?
Riley: My advice is much more practical. One, you have power. If you see something’s not right, you have the power to stand up for yourself and speak. And then on the boring side, keep learning. Never, never, never stop learning. I didn’t think I needed a second language, and then I was the general manager of a French team. So I did a crash course in French so I knew what the little Frenchies were talking about.
I didn’t understand a balance sheet, because I’m from, ‘You spend more than you bring in — it’s not balanced.’ So for me, that was crazy. And then, during Covid, I became our accountant for OakCliff Sailing in Oyter Bay, which is about a $1.8 million-a-year foundation. So I’m like, ‘OK, now I need to keep learning accounting.’ So you have power, and never, ever, ever stop learning.”
Silverman: When encountering an obstacle, what are some of the tools you’ve utilized to accomplish your goals?
Bert: So, there are all different kinds of obstacles. For me, unusually, the things that were scary to me in the beginning involved nautical stuff because I felt like I never knew what I was doing. I hate to say it. But I remember even far back in the academy, we had to take this diving class. We all had to do a backflip off the diving board to get through the class … And it wasn’t about the dive. It was about that you just do things, and you have to just do them.
And I think in a lot of other situations that are much more meaningful over the years, I’ve watched other people, and realized who I want to be. One of the things that I learned more recently, from one of the junior lawyers who worked for me, is that all these times that we think everybody’s watching us, actually, most people are worried about themselves. So don’t get too nervous about stuff. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve learned along the way.
