Aulana L. Peters

Aulana Peters was born in 1941, in Shreveport, Louisiana. At the time, her father waited on tables, and her mother worked as a domestic helper. A sister was born a year later, and the family moved to Florida for the duration of World War II, while Peters' father served in the U.S. Signal Corps.

In 1945, the family moved to Philadelphia to take advantage of job opportunities there. In Philadelphia, three more daughters were born into the family. Peters' father worked at a factory owned by Radio Corporation of America (RCA), but after repeatedly being passed over for promotions he believed he had earned, he left RCA and took a job as a local salesman with Seagram Company Ltd., a liquor distiller. By the time he retired in the early 1970s, he had risen to become sales manager for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

Both of Peters' parents recognized the benefits a good education would give their children. Her mother, who had been an honors student in high school, determined that her daughters would all go to college. Impressed with the Philadelphia parochial school system, she became a Catholic so her children could qualify for acceptance in the parish schools. She and Peters were baptized the same day. Soon after, Peters started school at Our Mother of Sorrows Elementary School in West Philadelphia. Her mother began selling cosmetics in a drugstore until landing a job as a teacher's aide.

At an early age, Peters and her sisters learned the value of work as a way to self-sufficiency. From the age of 12, she babysat and helped clean neighbors' houses. When asked by one neighbor to wear a uniform and wait on guests at a dinner party, Peters hesitated, not wanting to be thought of as a servant. But her mother encouraged her to accept the job, saying, "Don't hesitate or be embarrassed to accept honest work even if it is housecleaning or waiting tables. The job you do does not define you. This is not what you will be doing for the rest of your life." Peters did work the dinner party, but without a uniform.

The summer before college, she was a drugstore cashier. The next three summers, she answered telephones and ran title searches for a small company that provided such services to finance and mortgage companies.

Peters earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the College of New Rochelle, and 10 years later earned a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law in 1973. In the interim, she lived in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. In 1973, she joined the national law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and was made a partner in 1980.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan named Peters commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Thus, she became the first African American ever to head the SEC and the first woman ever to do so. In 1988, Peters returned to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, retiring from the firm in late 2000. While there, Peters was involved in a number of pro bono activities, including running a student law club in an inner-city middle school.

Peters has served on the public oversight board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and on the steering committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. In addition, she serves on the U.S. Comptroller General's Accountability Advisory Council and the International Public Interest Oversight Board, which oversees the audit, educational, and ethics standard-setting activities of the International Federation of Accountants. In addition, she has been a trustee of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and has served on the boards of Northrop Grumman Corp., 3M Corp., Merrill Lynch, and Deere & Company.

Peters and her husband have worked with a Los Angeles-based organization, the South Central Gifted Scholars Fund, which provides mentoring and financial support to inner-city high school students who hope to attend college.