Haddonfield resident Susan Mucciarone is leading the charge for women in finance having been elected to the Board of Directors within the Forum of Executive Women.
Haddonfield resident Susan Mucciarone may have just been elected to the board at an organization consisting of more than 450 influential women, but for much of her life, Mucciarone has been a minority among men.
“I grew up in an Italian family with mostly boys; I gravitated toward a male-dominated business of finance. I needed some balance,” Mucciarone said with a good-natured laugh.
Mucciarone was appointed to the 2017–2018 Board of Directors within the Forum of Executive Women — an organization comprised of influential women representing a variety businesses in the Greater Philadelphia region. Formed in 1977, the forum’s membership consists of women in senior positions at corporations, nonprofits and in the public sector. The group provides symposiums and roundtables, publishes research reports on gender diversity and works to mentor the next generation of female leaders.
Her journey toward becoming one of Philadelphia’s top businesswomen actually started in the Midwest.
Growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, Mucciarone was raised around small business owners. She said both sides of her family owned restaurants, and her mother kept a careful eye on the books and managed the business aspect of her family’s restaurant.
A natural aptitude for math combined with the small business exposure drew Mucciarone to study accounting at Bowling Green State University. The first in her family to earn a college degree, Mucciarone graduated a semester early — foregoing commencement exercises by doing so, but landing an accounting job with BF Goodrich, instead.
While working at BF Goodrich, Mucciarone put herself through Case Western Reserve University, attending classes at night and graduating with a master’s degree in business from the Weatherhead School of Management.
Her career took her to Louisville and Charlottesville before she arrived in Philadelphia in 2001. At the time, she was working for First Union National Bank, which is now Wells Fargo. She said she was at a point in her career where she was looking for an interesting, diverse city, and Philadelphia fit the bill.
Mucciarone was living in Center City when she met her husband David Moore. The pair moved to Haddonfield in 2007 and would marry two years later in 2009. She said at the time, they were looking for a location within close proximity to the city and airport as well as a town that had a real sense of community. Haddonfield just worked for them, Mucciarone said.
In 2010, following several mergers at First Union, Mucciaronee began quietly looking for a change, which brought her to Glenmede, where she serves as managing director and director of private client relationships.
“Interestingly, I have found my way into a business that really taps into my aptitude for numbers and my interest in helping people,” Mucciarone said.
In her role, Mucciarone works with clients in all 50 states. She said her work runs the gamut from providing people with strategies for saving for their children’s college to helping people make a difference in their communities by helping them manage their philanthropic goals.
Along the way, Mucciarone has made a point to support women and girls in the financial sector. She said traditionally, there have been fewer women than men in financial services and investing, and she’s proud to have navigated her way through the field.
“Along the way, the one organization that I had made time for was the Girl Scouts,” Mucciarone said. “In any of the communities in which I lived, I navigated my way to a board or committee of the Girl Scouts. That was always my tie to the community.”
When she was starting out, much of her energy had gone toward her career, and she found herself spending a great deal of time travelling nationally. For that reason, Mucciarone wanted a way to connect with her homebase when she wasn’t travelling, and she found it with the Scouts. She said growing up with two brothers, the Girl Scouts was just as much a way to connect with girls in her youth as it came to be during her adult years travelling from city to city.
Mucciarone was introduced to the Forum of Executive Women through the Scouts. She said she became a member of the organization within a few years of moving to Philadelphia and was inspired by the diverse array of business women she was meeting through the organization. She said the forum is about bringing women together to advance their impact and influence in the region.
For Muccarione, the women who surrounded her growing up showed her what it meant to be a woman in business.
“I harken back to the fact that my mother was a working mom,” Mucciarone said. “Both of my grandmothers were active in their respective businesses.”
This past spring, Mucciarone’s accomplishments came full circle when Bowling Green offered her a chance to attend the commencement ceremony she had missed years prior. In front of 5,000 people, Mucciarone delivered the commencement address for the college of business administration and college of education and human development.
“It was very poignant,” Mucciarone said. “It was like a homecoming.”
