In this 18-minute audio excerpt (above) from the Ask Catherine & the Solari Team episode published on September 18, 2026, Catherine—prompted by a subscriber question about “insider” decision-making—reminisces about her time at the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and how she then came to be Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under HUD Secretary Jack Kemp.

At Dillon Read, which Catherine describes as “very private and white-shoe” (so much so that some people wondered whether the firm was “an investment bank or an intelligence agency or both”—Catherine says that it had “a little bit of that flavor”), she became the first woman promoted to managing director and the board of directors in the investment bank’s 150-plus year history. Catherine recounts how Chairman Nick Brady promoted her to that position. However, when he became Treasury Secretary, he initially tried to sabotage her move to Washington to join the Bush administration.

Catherine also mentions the “Kemp tapes,” a series of six audiotapes she recorded in the late 1990s at her attorneys’ request while she was immersed in litigation against the Department of Justice to fight false allegations of wrongdoing. (For those who have never managed significant assets and programs inside of a Washington agency, she notes, the Kemp tapes are “quite instructive.”)

For much more detail on what Catherine learned and observed while at Dillon Read, see Catherine’s online book, Dillon Read & Co. Inc. & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits.