March 18, 2021
Rebecca Ryskind Teti Professional
Rebecca Ryskind Teti Professional
Rebecca Ryskind Teti Professional
Rebecca Ryskind Teti Professional

March is Women's History Month – and at the Busch School, we're celebrating the vital role women play not just in American history, but also all the work the women of the Busch School do for our future business professionals. Today, we're profiling Rebecca Ryskind Teti, Director of Operations at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship.

Describe your career and accomplishments.

"The most fulfilling thing I did was marry and have four kids. As far as traditional jobs go, before the Busch School, I co-founded and ran a series of non-profit organizations, each of which made contributions I'm proud of. But my "baby" is probably Our Lady of Bethesda Retreat Center in Bethesda, MD. I've enjoyed a series of editing and writing jobs at magazines as well. I don't think of myself as having a "career" so much as having done a series of "next right things," starting out as a journalist, moving on to working at projects that interested me, where I thought I could do some good, and where I was free to bend the schedule to my family's needs. I have a knack for what journalists call "buried ledes," so my favorite accomplishments are times I broke stories or started things that other people then picked up and ran with."

Describe a role model or mentor that has helped you through you career.

"An early professional mentor was the late Stan Evans, a wonderful old-school journalist who headed the National Journalism Center when I was there. (I wrote a little eulogy for him several years ago here). He didn't take sloppy work and taught us how to dig for the truth of things. Regis Martin, my sponsor into the Catholic Church, who now teaches at U. Steubenville, is a teacher who changed my life in the best possible way. Also, the late Fr. Jim Schall, SJ, was a professor during grad school and remained a friend and advisor."

What do you want women of today to know about business?

"Women are freer today than at any time in history to pursue their personal vocations as they understand them. For women of faith, that means you have tremendous power in a sense to 'teach' the workplace how to embrace the unique gifts, needs, and desires (including for family) that women bring to the table. The French historian Régine Pernoud wrote once that, 'copying is a good school exercise. It has never produced a masterpiece. Why do we women not invent solutions adapted to our own time, just as other women did in their time?'"