A sample portrait

Carol Jensen

Among the first women selling medical devices in the Upper Midwest, she raised her children by phone from motel rooms and rose to run the company's sales.

Carol covered western Minnesota and the Dakotas from a small car and a long list of motels, and phoned home at half past seven every evening, wherever she was. In 1998 she became her company's first woman vice-president. She agreed to the portrait on condition that nobody made her sound like a pioneer.

Born 1957 · Minneapolis, Minnesota · A Christmas gift from Kirsten and Eric

Carol turning back to smile on a snowy Minneapolis street

A chapter from her portrait

Both Lists

From the second of four conversations, on work and the years she raised Kirsten and Eric.

There were three men in the room. Three men and me and an ashtray. And the one in the middle, Mr. Lindqvist, he was the sales manager, very nice man actually, he looked at my application and he said, now Carol, are you planning to start a family? Just like that. And I said, I'm planning to sell catheters, Mr. Lindqvist. And the other two laughed, and he laughed, and I got the job. I was twenty-two.

The Halloween blizzard. Ninety-one. I was in Des Moines for a hospital meeting, I was supposed to fly home Halloween afternoon, and it started snowing at home and it didn't stop. Kirsten was a witch and Eric was a Ninja Turtle, and of course they had to wear their snowsuits under the costumes, so the Turtle was about twice as wide. And I called at seven-thirty and Kirsten was crying because I'd promised I'd be home to carve the pumpkin. And I sat on the bed in that motel with the phone cord, and I'd never felt like that before.

I kept a Day-Timer, the little black binder, and in the back pages I wrote down every single thing I missed. The Christmas concert in ninety. Kirsten's spelling bee, she went out on rhythm, which, honestly, who can spell rhythm. Then one night, I want to say ninety-two, I turned to the front of the book and I wrote down what I'd done. The account in Grand Forks. Paying the mortgage on my own. And I made myself read both. I kept doing that. Both lists.

Sent in by the family

Their questions, answered

Maya, her granddaughter, 14, asked

What did you wear to work when you started?

Oh, the suits. Skirt suits, always a skirt, navy or gray, and a blouse with the bow at the neck, the floppy bow. Pantyhose in January in Bismarck. My mother bought me a book, Dress for Success, the women's one, and I read that thing like it was the Bible.

Leo, her grandson, 9, asked

What was your job, actually?

You'd go to the hospital and you'd see the purchasing people, and you'd see the cath lab nurses, and the nurses were the ones who really decided. And then sometimes you'd scrub in. You'd stand in the OR in the gown and the mask, back by the wall, and if the doctor had a question about the device you'd answer it.

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Carol, her family and her company are fictional. Minneapolis and the Halloween Blizzard of 1991 are real. Every portrait we make is private to the family.