Clara Lippert Glenn, the female CEO of one of Forrestal Village’s prestigious firms, The Oxford Princeton Programme (TOPP), was interviewed for the Corner Office column of the New York Times on Sunday. TOPP, a global training resource for energy professionals.  After founding the Princeton Energy Group in 1992, she merged it with an Oxford-based firm, and now runs more than 200 public courses around the world.

She was profiled by Anna Cunningham in U.S. 1 Newspaper in June.  “Lippert Glenn, a liberal arts language major, has parlayed her love of other cultures into a long, successful career in learning and development for energy professionals all over the world . . . Today the one-time languages major may have forgotten much of her French, allowed her Russian to get rusty and let her Spanish slide, but she is fluent in the international terminology of energy power… “

The New York Times interview revealed that her husband’s death, when he was 56 and she was 48, changed her views on work-life balance. “. . . a well-adjusted, well-rounded employee, in the end, is going to stay with you longer and produce better work. It’s not worth it to push people to where they’re putting in 12-hour days. And I’m going to force you to take your vacation, and I don’t want to get e-mails from you while you’re on vacation.”

However, the NYT did not indicate how this language arts major got into the energy industry, starting as a trader, in the first place.  That’s because U.S. 1 reporters are required to ask “What did your parents do?” Answer:  her father had various positions in the oil refining sector, including starting a company that manufactured additives for use in refineries’ catalytic conversion units.

My conclusions: Rarely does the apple fall a big distance from the tree. And  — talent will out, no matter what your major!