Growing up as one of eight siblings in the southern part of New Jersey, or South Jersey as it’s known to all who live there, has its disadvantages. Cathy Engelbert had to share a room with her messier younger sister Peggy. There were occasional fistfights, which Cathy usually lost. Both her parents had jobs outside the home, and sometimes her dad took extra work on weekends and evenings, either for more cash or for less chaos. But in elementary school, when Engelbert ran for class president, one advantage of having a big clan became apparent.
“She wanted to win so bad, and she was going up against the most popular boy in the class, so she came up with this campaign slogan, ‘Have a taffy, vote for Cathy,’” recalls Peggy, a nurse. “We run to the store and buy bags of Charms Pops and Tootsie Pops, and we tape the slogan to all of them.” Then four of her five brothers–Kurt, Kenny, Kevin and Keith (Kyle came later)–Peggy and oldest sister Beth gave out the candy around the school. Engelbert won in a landslide.
It’s interesting that the perpetrator of so flagrant a vote-buying scheme would be such a success in the audit business. The shyly confident, quietly competitive Engelbert, 53, is now CEO of Deloitte U.S. Like class presidents, Deloitte CEOs are elected, and like U.S. Presidents, they serve four years with the option of another four. Engelbert became the first female CEO of a Big Four financial-services firm in 2015 and will soon stand for her second term. If she wins, she will be the first two-term CEO since 1999.