It is said that adversity causes some to break, others to break records. Faced with a male-dominated transportation industry, the women who founded the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) opted for the latter.

"I was a young railroad lobbyist in my 20s," explains WTS International founder Christine J. Vineis, now president of Capital Partnerships LLC. "One day my CEO, another company officer and I went to lunch with the chairman of an important joint House and Senate committee. During lunch, the chairman actually sneaked his hand onto my knee. That was the way things were then. But not everyone was like that — my boss, for one.

"He said there used to be a group of ‘Southern Railroad Women,' and suggested that I should try to organize D.C. women that were involved in transportation. So I brought 40 women together with that aim, and became president of the first WTS chapter.

"There were many other women's organizations in the late 1970s," she continues, "but nothing in transportation specifically. And unfortunately, most of those organizations focused on fairly trivial things, like dressing for success. We wanted to talk about leadership and strategic decision making. We wanted to meet with leaders in transportation and government. Since we didn't play golf, we knew we already had a handicap. WTS was our answer to the old boys' network."

WTS has stayed true to Vineis's original vision, which drew support from such trailblazing women as Elizabeth Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Patricia Goldman. In fact, Vineis is the first to admit subsequent WTS leaders improved on her concept.

"I left the workplace for 10 years to raise my children. When I jumped back in, I decided to start my own company. The first thing I did was reach out to WTS. They supported me without reservation. I felt proud, appreciative and gratified: WTS provided an instant community, a bridge and a support network in a way that I couldn't have imagined back when I founded it."

"When I started out, it was anything but a level playing field," explains Mary Jane O'Meara, Massport's director of the Tobin Bridge and a former WTS National president. "I was often the only woman in a boardroom filled with 15 or 20 men. They expected me to get the coffee. Women in transportation have accomplished a lot since that time, but the bad news is that we're still talking about women and occupational equality. It should be settled by now."