Be Kind and Have a Solution: How One of the First Women to Graduate From Stillman Stands Up for Herself and Others

Linda Schaeffer ’73 (née Wlazlowski) grew up in South River, NJ. Her first job was a paper route with a boy from her neighborhood. He delivered the newspapers; she collected the money. She considers it the first sign she was meant to be an accountant. Industrious, enterprising and fond of having pocket change, Schaeffer worked during high school as a babysitter, waitress and cashier. While at Seton Hall, she managed the new women’s dorm front desk and worked as a cocktail waitress, as the drinking age was then 18 in New Jersey.

A first-generation college student, Schaeffer was drawn to Seton Hall because she wanted to become an attorney, and the university had a law school. She also heard they had a good business school and thought it would behoove her to have a business background before studying law.

In 1970—two years after the university went co-ed—Schaeffer enrolled. She was one of two women in the accounting program. Whereas socially this did not faze her, the lack of a women’s bathroom in Bayley Hall did. The administration wanted her to use the bathroom in the library. “I said, then what I’ll do is walk into the men’s room and take a good look around on the way to my private stall.” The university was convinced. They converted a faculty bathroom in Bayley into a women’s room. “I approached them in a kind way. It was a concern, and it was complemented with a solution.” In her junior and senior years, Schaeffer was one of only two students placed in a pilot program with the IRS that trained students to be field agents. “They offered me a very nice position when I graduated, but I decided I didn’t want to work for the government.” Instead, she accepted a position at Haskins & Sells (now Deloitte), where she continued to have to stand up for herself in the face of gender disparity.

“Once a partner referred to me as ‘hon.’ I guess I gave him a dirty look because he asked me if I minded that. I told him I didn’t if he didn’t mind me referring to him as ‘boy.’ That sent a huge message, but I did it with a smile. I didn’t get fired and was never referred to as ‘hon’ again.”

When Schaeffer wasn’t invited to a partners’ golf outing, she told the managing director she would attend the lunch. He said women were not allowed in the club on Wednesdays. She told him she was going anyway and would get herself a good seat. The outing was canceled, with a sincere apology. Schaeffer was living by her motto: “Be kind, and when you have a complaint, also have a solution.”

When Schaeffer became pregnant with her first child, the firm she was then working for, Laventhol & Horwath, said her career would be limited. “I was told I would never become a partner because I decided to have a child. They assumed I couldn’t work a 60- to 75-hour work week. We had no maternity leave, nothing.” So, Schaeffer opened her own firm, Schaeffer Lamont, partnering with Sharon Lamont and taking several clients with her. Laventhol & Horwath attempted to sue for breaching a non-compete. “I told them I never signed one. Frankly, they never asked me to sign one. They never suspected a woman would go out and do that.”

Schaeffer ran her firm from 1981 to 1986, bringing other associates on when she merged her Princeton, NJ office with R.D. Hunter & Co. She began doing forensic accounting in divorce cases. Her earlier IRS training came into play, as she had been taught how to discover income and assets. A female attorney heard about her background and recruited her for a divorce case representing a woman. The husband’s team referred to them as the Three Musketeers. And, like their namesake, the three women prevailed. “Sure enough, we found a house, a mistress, another daughter and a second set of books.”

Schaeffer eventually merged her practice with Withum, Smith and Brown and led their forensic accounting practice in the Princeton office. “My passion was law, but I did it in a different way. And, it was really Seton Hall that afforded me that opportunity, by giving me that, that internship at the IRS.”

Schaeffer has retired twice—in 2007 and 2013—but is out of retirement yet again, working as a part-time family mediator in divorce cases. She is now deeply involved with her alma mater, serving on the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Stillman School of Business. Schaeffer looks back on that IRS internship from decades ago. “Had I not had that experience, I would have remained a tax specialist. My original goal was to be an attorney. By being an expert witness, I spent many days in court in an exciting and challenging field, without having to go to law school.”

Now Schaeffer stands up for the next generation of Stillman students, using the fruits of her success to help ensure they have similar real-world training. She and her husband recently established the Schaeffer Excellence Endowed Fund that supports students in the Stillman School of Business for applied-learning opportunities. By using her required minimum distribution from her IRA to make an annual qualified charitable deduction and by naming Seton Hall University as a beneficiary of the IRA, Schaeffer is making an impact today and in the future.

There is a saying that it is better to give than to receive. To enable a scholar to gain real-world experience gives them an edge over other students who have no meaningful work experience. I am hopeful that, one day, I will receive a letter from someone who benefited from their applied-learning scholarship.
- Schaeffer

Categories: Alumni, Business