A path to equal opportunity
In 1987, Ruth Getter (GRS’83) left the Boston area and moved to Toronto—with no job, no place to live—to be closer to family. She soon landed an entry-level position as a researcher at TD Bank; within seven years, she’d risen to VP and chief economist, the first woman to hold that position.
“My mom was a self-starter, the first in her family to go to college, and a self-professed lifelong student,” says her son, Aaron Jay Polak. Getter’s pioneering journey took her from studying genetics and math as an undergraduate to cracking a Canadian bank’s glass ceiling. And, along the way, she also earned a BU doctorate in economics while raising two kids.
Polak (CAS’87, LAW’93), who runs his own law firm specializing in medium and growing businesses in the technology, health, and creative sectors, counts his independent streak among his late mother’s many influences.
“The BU PhD was her third degree, and it was in a completely different field from her first two degrees,” he says. “I learned from her that we need to ensure women have equal opportunity to succeed.”
Polak and his wife, Karyn (LAW’94), recently endowed a $100,000 scholarship in Getter’s name in the BU Department of Economics. It honors her legacy as a trailblazer in the field and aims to support women graduate students at BU following in her footsteps.
“I wanted to do something that she would be remembered by, something she valued,” says Polak. “I think her most transformative experiences were at BU, not just because of the academics and professors, but because of the lifelong friends she made—many of them international students. It was a long haul for her; I saw her studying all the time, and it took her four years to do her thesis because she was also working then, as a consultant.”
He hopes her story, and rise to become a noted economist, can be an inspiration to others.
“The world has changed a lot since my mom was a student,” says Polak. But some things, he notes, have not changed enough: according to the international 2020 Women in Economics Index, only 9 percent of the chief economists at large banks are women. Polak and his wife want to carry forth Getter’s dedication to education and equal opportunity with this gift.
“We feel very strongly that to the extent you can support an underrepresented group, that’s what you should do,” he says.
Please visit bu.edu/cas/alumni/giving or contact Meghan Frost, CAS assistant dean, at mmfrost@bu.edu or 617-358-6376 to learn more about giving to CAS.