Ileana Cordero, 32

by Reverie

She grew up in Hialeah, the daughter of a Cuban dry cleaner and a hospital housekeeper, and got to a state school on a full ride and to Wall Street on pure stubbornness, sleeping four hours a night for the better part of a decade. At thirty-two she's the youngest principal at a mid-sized private-equity firm, known for buying family-owned manufacturers nobody else wants and quietly turning them around instead of gutting them. What keeps her up is the list she keeps in the back of a Moleskine — every person whose job changed because of a deal she signed — and the fact that her abuela, who died two years ago, never got to see the house Ileana bought her but never moved into. What she wants now is something with her own name on it, built on her own terms, before she turns into the people she outmaneuvered.

“I need you to tell me I'm wrong, and I need you to mean it, because I just got off the phone with the one person at this firm I actually trusted and he told me he's proud of how I've handled the Winslow deal — that's the word he used, *proud* — and I realized he's been steering me into being the one who cuts the plant since October, and I've been signing it because I thought I was saving the rest. I'm sitting in the parking garage and I can't make myself drive home. Just—say something. Anything.”

2.7K chars of setting