Lynner creates paths for women; Fifty years later, Richardson credits schools for success

LYNN-Grace Richardson can remember the old days in Lynn, sledding down the hill at Happy Valley (now Gannon) Golf Course, taking the bus to Union Street’s Olympia Theatre and hiking up the old stone tower at Lynn Woods with her older sister Ann.Those were simpler times in American culture, where the middle child of a Scottish immigrant and a teacher grew from a wide-eyed little girl cutting through lawns to get to the Lynn Woods Elementary School, to an accomplished graduate of Lynn English’s Class of 1956.Richardson no longer lives in Lynn – her career as an internationally-recognized business executive, teacher and philanthropist has led her around the world, and eventually to an apartment in the heart of American business, New York City.But the retired vice president of Consumer Affairs at Colgate Palmolive always finds time to return to her birth city each year to visit her family and remember her roots.This year, her bags were a little heavier on her Christmas trip home, as she was toting the 2007 Frank H.T Rhodes Accomplished Alumni Service Award from Cornell University.Richardson is one of the most accomplished women in the history of business. After graduating from English, she attended Simmons College, Colgate University and New York University, where she polished her skills in business, human ecology and education, all of which prepared her for a diverse and groundbreaking career.After stints working for Gillette in Washington D.C., J.C. Penney in New York, Con Edison and Cheeseborough Ponds in a variety of corporate positions, she landed at Colgate Palmolive in 1985, where she leapt from director of Consumer Affairs to vice president of Consumer Affairs in less than a year.For a woman to hold such a position in that time was rare, if not revolutionary, but Richardson excelled, taking the company global in the time before her retirement in 2004.Always an advocate for women’s rights, Richardson now serves as the president of the Board at the YWCA in New York City, and belongs to several other international women’s groups.”Now that I am retired, it is like ?what am I going to do next?’ So much of my career was bringing a voice to the consumers, now I want to make sure that women’s voices are heard,” she said. “Women don’t think that work is going to be any different (than for a man) Monday to Friday, but there still is a difference event though things have changed. There are some things that young women still need to know. We still need to be helping young women get ahead.”Richardson said she always knew that she wanted to get into business in some way, polishing her retail skills at the now defunct Hoffman’s, T.W. Rodgers and Tom’s Florist stores while she was in school, but it wasn’t until a professor at Simmons convinced her to step away from her teaching position at the college and focus more on her own education that she began to peruse the corporate landscape.As a woman working in business in the 1960s, she preceded the women’s movement of the 1970s, something she said did not occur to her at the time. She says she became successful because she knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to ask for it when she saw that door open.”I had confidence to do what I was doing at that moment,” she said. “I built confidence as the years went along, and I saw doors open in my career. I knew enough to ask for the vice president position (at Colgate Palmolive). Sometimes you really need to have the courage to ask for what you want.”She says women in today’s culture worry her because of the role models they have, such as movie stars and models who create an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation. She is hoping to continue motivating and helping women across the world to achieve as she did in the business world.”There has been a lot of movement from the mid-70s to today, but women need to continue moving forward,” she said. “For me, when I was going through it, it was kind of the way it was, you didn’t notice. People don’t realize t