Early Career

Bobbie always had a vision for education, inclusiveness and community, yet she needed to contribute to the household income while her husband was working towards his graduate degree. Bobbie put aside her own advanced degree goals and joined the teaching staff of an elementary school in Hancock Park, and then another in San Francisco, before moving back to LA with another teaching position. In 1969 Bobbie gave birth to her daughter Lyndsey, and in 1970 her son Justin was born. The family moved to Pacific Palisades, California. Turning her focus to the education of her own children, Bobbie was inspired to start a co-operative pre-school in her community, the Pacific Palisades Family Co-Op. With no prior business background, Bobbie’s initiative and instincts soon brought the school to statewide attention, and she consequently spearheaded the Early Childhood Education Program for the Pacific Palisades Elementary School District. After winning Teacher of the Year for the County, in addition to an award in Early Childhood Education, her work came to the attention of the LA Board of Education, and she was asked to consult with LAUSD regarding the then-controversial plan to integrate the Districts with a view to racial diversity.

Her husband Bill McMorrow, however, got moved to Pennsylvania with his banking firm. Bobbie and the children moved with him. Bobbie soon began volunteering at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital before she was offered employment as a play therapist in the oncology ward of a children’s hospital. She returned to teaching the next year with a position at Friends School Haverford, a Quaker elementary school. But after less than three years in PA, the family moved back to Los Angeles with another transfer of Bill’s bank. Bobbie took this opportunity to collaborate on the formation a new cooperative school: Mar Vista Family Center, a non-profit, collaborative pre-school that has subsequently helped transform a community once filled with urban gang violence and unsafe streets into a thriving, healthy community while giving its residents a safe space in which they can learn, grow and lead. Bobbie was a founding member of Mar Vista Family Center and became a teacher and Board member. To this day she still consults with the school. 

Business Experience 

Though she loved Mar Vista and found her work fulfilling, Bobbie began to see a growing need to focus on her own family’s needs. Additionally, she needed to become financially independent as her marriage started to unravel. In 1982, Bobbie picked up a MS magazine and read an article about women “making it” in a man’s world. She took it seriously – and personally. Bobbie decided to transition from education to business after reading Richard Nelson Bolles’ iconic “What Color Is Your Parachute” (1970). She realized, “I’m good at hooking people together.” She considered real estate and landscaping, but those fields didn’t resonate with her. She landed upon head-hunting as a new directional avenue. But she couldn’t get hired, because she was a (then) 37-year-old woman. “The employers all said, yeah, you seem smart, but this is the world of business, and after all, you’re a teacher. You’re not really tough enough to be in business,” Bobbie has said she was told. So, she got an office job in a small management firm, deciding to work her way upward. When the firm needed some new hires, she begged her boss to let her do the searches instead of hiring an outside firm. And this determination changed the course of her life and career. 

McMorrow Consulting 

While doing the preparation work for a 20-person Thanksgiving dinner in 1985, she got a phone call from the COO of a law firm for whom she had helped find a placement. Now he was calling her directly to ask if her office would help him find another placement rather than using a headhunting firm. Making an instinctive decision, Bobbie replied, “That’s so interesting you should ask, because I’m starting my own company to do just this kind of work. And I would love you to be our first clients.” Bobbie realized that a specialty in law firms was just what she had in mind. She liked lawyers. “They read a lot,” she has said. And she knew from that moment that her firm would be all female. McMorrow Associates (later McMorrow Consulting) would be the first all-woman consulting company, employing women from varied and diverse backgrounds. In the early years of the company, Bobbie hired her friend first, those trying to get back into the workforce after having put their families ahead of their own careers. As the firm grew, she continued to focus on giving opportunities to women who had met with resistance in the workforce because of their lack of business background. “It was like going from hell to purgatory, those first few years of the firm,” she said. And yet, the company thrived. It dawned on Bobbie that New York law firms were starting to expand or return to LA. Newly divorced now, she went to New York with one good dress and one pair of black shoes. She headed to 1 Wall Street and met with the firm that became her “retained search” client. Within the next 3 years, McMorrow Consulting became the #1 mergers and acquisitions consulting firm in the country. Bobbie McMorrow was the only woman and just the second non-lawyer to be featured on the cover of California Law Business. Today, McMorrow Consulting has handled over 30 law firm mergers in addition to other consulting work. (See www.mcmorrowconsultingcom .) 

Rise Up!

Bobbie’s business experience with creating McMorrow Consulting naturally led to a passionate interest in why women don’t – or didn’t – succeed in the business world. She began leading personal one-on-one mentoring sessions and then small focus groups intent on “leveling the playing field.” As Bobbie says, “Women are not taught how to use power. But if we are interested in understanding our lives and in being of service to others – which we are, naturally, in our home lives – then we can take that understanding into the work force and literally change the course of the world.”
See www.bobbiemcmorrow.com