If anyone had earned the right to feel satisfied, it was Dame Inga Beale.

The first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London — one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions, founded in 1688. A trailblazer by every definition of the word. When I had the privilege of sitting across from her over coffee at the St. Regis hotel in London as part of Project Legacy, I expected to hear a story of triumph. And I did.

But I also heard something I didn’t expect: honesty.

I was standing in a ballroom in Chicago, half-listening to a banking executive deliver the kind of career advice that gets repeated so often it stops meaning anything.

“Even if you’re not passionate about your work,” he said, “put your all into it.”

Nose to the grindstone. Make yourself indispensable. Work is life. I’d heard it. I’d lived it. I nodded along the way you do when you’ve accepted something as truth without ever examining it.

Then a voice cut through the room.