Jacqueline Morby Job: Senior director, TA Associates Age: 69 Hometown: Sacramento, Calif.; resides in Shadyside Education: Bachelor's degree, psychology, Stanford University, 1959; master's, management, Simmons Graduate Management School, 1978. Career: 1978-82: associate, TA Associates; 1982-2002: managing director, TA Associates; 2003-present: senior director, TA Associates. Click photo for larger image. Listen In Jacqueline Morby talks about why Pittsburgh hasn't had a breakout tech company success since Fore Systems and FreeMarkets. Ms. Morby discusses her experiences working as one of the few females in the male-dominated venture investment business.

Jacqueline Morby is a senior director of TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm with $10 billion under management. Its local investments have included Medrad Inc., Ansys Inc. and HVL/Douglas Laboratories. In 2004, she and her husband, Jeffrey Morby, retired vice chairman of Mellon Bank, were among several families who founded the Cure Alzheimer's Fund.

Q: You launched your investment career with TA Associates at age 40. What did you do before that?

A: In the early 1960s, I worked for several organizations in California including Hughes Aircraft, mostly in accounting-type jobs. Then I taught school for a while and then we lived in South America and I had small children so I did not work. We moved to Boston in the mid-'70s and I went to business school, then I joined TA right out of business school in 1978. I was probably an associate; I don't remember having a title. Then four years later I became a partner.

Q: How did you end up opening a Pittsburgh office for the firm?

A: I was with them about eight years in Boston and then Jeff, my husband, was recruited to Crocker Bank in San Francisco, so I went to the Palo Alto, Calif., office for two years. Then Jeff moved to American Express in New York City, so I opened an office there. Then he was recruited to Mellon in Pittsburgh so I opened the Pittsburgh office in 1988. It turned out well.

Q: What investments has TA made here?

A: I was an early investor in [medical device maker] Medrad but we made that in 1980 before I came here. The Hillmans had been investors in our funds [and in Medrad]. I read about Medrad and cold-called them. I came out to see [company founder] "Doc" Heilman and he showed me the implantable defibrillator. That was the real reason we made the investment. We made two investments while I was working here. One was [engineering software maker] Ansys, in 1994, which was really a leveraged buyout from the founder, John Swanson. That was innovative because he sold it but bought back into it with us so he still owned a piece of it. The other company was HVL/Douglas Laboratories, a vitamin company, in 1997. They are very quiet, family owned ... and were recently sold. Their vitamins are prescribed by doctors and not sold in regular retail outlets.

Q: How do you pick investments?

A: You want to finance companies that have a prayer of making it. You don't want to just finance something to say you financed it. You want them to have products that have a market and that are unique in some way. It's sometimes hard to understand from an outsider's point of view that you don't want to be throwing money down a rat hole so to speak because the products are "me-too" products or have a very small market.

Q: How would you describe the current investment climate in Pittsburgh?

A: I've been on the boards of Innovation Works and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, so I do have a little more perspective. When I came to Pittsburgh 18 years ago, it was very quiet. Not a lot was going on. A lot happens in 18 years. We have yet to see any breakout companies since Fore Systems and FreeMarkets, but I think there are some interesting ones percolating that I'm hearing about and certainly new company formation and new company financing is up dramatically.

There are a tremendous number of venture capital firms from outside of Pittsburgh coming in, which is what we need: other people's money -- OPM -- to come and finance some companies and get them going. We're also trying to start a new angel fund ... and that's another big plus because the hard part is that these little companies need a couple hundred thousand dollars just to get started and it's very hard to find that. I think the goal is to raise somewhere between $8 million and $10 million.

Q: Why hasn't the region produced a "breakout" firm since FreeMarkets and Fore?

A: I'm not sure what the answer is. I think the mood of the city is more in tune with producing a company like that now than it was in the past. I think this is a city that had in the past been more large company-oriented and not as welcoming to small upstarts, and if you made a mistake once you were never forgiven. And there wasn't money around for these little companies.

The other part of it is management. The great thing about Boston and Silicon Valley is they have people who have managed entrepreneurial companies. Then a company gets sold, so they're available to run another company. And I think that base has grown here, too, where you have people out there who have had enough experience to come in and run some of these companies. It's very rare that an entrepreneur can take the company all the way. Bill Gates didn't. They think of him as if he did but he brought in management right away. He was still CEO and chairman but he had other people running the operation.

Q: What's it been like being a female in a male-dominated business climate?

A: If I go back to 1978, it was very interesting because everywhere I went, I was with all men and actually, that's still pretty much the case. I'd go out to see these companies and I'd be there about an hour and the president would say, "Now tell me, how did you get into this business?" They were always very curious if I was married and if I had children.

But that isn't the case anymore as much. I think people are more used to having women attorneys and women in positions. For my first board seat, my partners at TA had to force the company to take me on. That was about 1979 and I don't know whether it was that I was a woman, or I was young -- though I wasn't that young. I was already 40. But I was new.

Then later I became well known in the software area and everyone wanted me on their boards. It sort of switched around. You get used to it. I don't even think about it that I'm the only woman in the room. At my firm, we have two [female] vice presidents and I hope they are going to become partners. I'm still the only woman partner at TA.

Q: Why are there still so few women?

A: In the venture capital area, I think there are more women on the West Coast in the business than on the East Coast and many more women than when I started out. But it's still predominantly men. There are some major corporations being run by women now but you really need to work your way up through the politics and I don't think that's easy.

There are a lot of articles written about balancing home and life and work and I feel strongly that it can be done. I think it's difficult in the first five to six years of a child's life, but I know lots of women who have done it. It was easier for me because I started at 40 and my children were already in school. But Jeff and I were really balancing things in those years ... like helping with homework. We both were in pretty intense careers.

Q: What is the Cure Alzheimer's Fund which you and your husband co-founded?

A: It's what we call venture philanthropy. The other board members and founders are in the venture business as well. We are backing a Harvard-based genetic researcher who discovered the first Alzheimer gene. There are four Alzheimer genes in existence that we know about and a new one has not been discovered in 10 years. We have helped finance the equipment and research to discover the other genes.

We think within two years we will have 20 to 30 genes discovered so that knowledge will be out for everybody to use to work on a cure.

We raised $3 million in our first year, which is pretty amazing for a startup. Harvard and six other sites, including the University of Pittsburgh, are doing research. The founders are financing all the overhead costs so that all the money donated to our foundation is going directly into the research.

Q: Why did you choose Alzheimer's as your cause?

A: I have Alzheimer's in my family but that wasn't really why. We had been looking for something to do to give back to the world. We found out that funding for the National Institutes of Health was being cut back just when they were on the verge of all these breakthroughs. We got the idea for the foundation and recruited other people and we were off and running.