Toronto Star

Janet Noble is usually the consummate professional. After all, she's a principal of a large, respected Toronto architectural firm, a status few women achieve. But there she stood in her standard grey suit and pearls with her requisite props — the PowerPoint presentation, the site map — summing up her team's job bid to a high-profile potential client, when she surprised herself and everyone else. She cried. She told the panel that, as a woman in a non-traditional career, she had worked all her life to be where she was today to do this job for them. "It was quite an emotional moment and quite spontaneous," says Noble, 50. "I told them what this job meant to me and how privileged I'd feel." Many on the panel teared up, too. Noble's consortium got the job — devising the master plan and program for the New Women's College Hospital — because the group showed consistent excellence and architectural depth, says Jane Pepino, chair of the hospital's capital redevelopment planning committee. And the tears didn't hurt.