Just a day before the Fearless Girl statue made her debut in New York’s Financial District, her real-life counterpart had already beaten her to the punch.

Lauren Simmons signed her name to the New York Stock Exchange’s constitution like thousands of traders who’d come before her, but unlike most of them, she was making history.

On March 6, 2017, 22-year-old Lauren became the youngest female, only full-time female (at the time), and second ever African-American female trader in the New York Stock Exchange’s 227-year history.

“There was silence on the trading floor. You could only hear the machines whirring. Everyone was in shock,” Lauren said of the day her trader’s exam results came in.

The reaction wasn’t entirely unexpected. As woman from Georgia with a Psychology degree and no experience in finance, it was a surprising turn of events for Lauren, as well. Her education, prior jobs and working skillsets almost read like potential aptitude test results – psychology major, statistics minor, genetic counselor, medical clinic intern, sales manager – but nothing really stuck for Lauren until she applied to a financial securities firm.

She’d moved to New York with no job or home of her own, but determined to make just about anything work, even a position that she was overqualified for in an unknown field. Intrigued by Lauren’s background and tenacity, one of the firm’s partners invited her to apply as a trader instead, and well, the rest became actual history.

“You don’t need 100 ‘yeses,’ you just need that one opportunity,” Lauren encourages.

And her field is one that could use a lot more opportunity for the women and people of color she represents. The same year Lauren became affectionately known as “The Lone Woman on Wall Street,” a Stanford University study showed that men made up 75% of the wealth management field and filled more than 80% of leadership roles. The 25% of women in the field were just as productive, and in some cases outperformed, but were 56% more likely to get fired for a mistake. The numbers are even more dismal when it comes to black female professionals in particular.

Lauren aims to change those statistics with both her presence and her reassurance as someone who’s braved the unknown. “We encourage men to take risks and make failures. And they’re rewarded for it,” Lauren says. “Women don’t get that opportunity as often, but I encourage us all to try.”

Her encouragement couldn’t be better timed. Both sitting presidents of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq are opportunity-seizing, ceiling-shattering women. The circumstances are a far cry from those in 1967 when Muriel Siebert became the first woman eligible to trade on the NYSE floor, and for efficiency’s sake, was accommodated with a single bathroom stall built right in the trading room.

There’s a proper bathroom now, but Lauren had her own minor struggle with accommodation as well: the jackets identifying traders in the hustle and bustle of the Exchange only come in men’s sizes. No problem for Lauren who’s built her whole career off the belief that to be successful, we have to “be uncomfortable to go after what we want. Do what you’re meant to do and do it well.”

She’s done just that. So well, in fact, that in addition to hundreds of starstruck articles by global authorities like Forbes and Fortune recognizing Lauren’s nontraditional journey to Wall Street, there’s already a biopic being filmed about her seemingly storybook – but in truth, determined – rise to one of America’s most historically exclusive occupations. In the meantime, Lauren’s hung up her trader’s jacket to pursue an even broader range of opportunities like worldwide speaking engagements and executive producing, because despite her success at the NYSE, she reminds her cheering onlookers that “I’m 25. I don’t know if I’ve found my purpose. But I’m open and fearless.”

And a bronze statue’s got nothing a black girl who can say that.

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