Sweat Equity

Introduction: Take Your Gym to Work

Aarti Kapoor was an investment banking cliché in 2008. She was a study in stress, owing to the hours she was logging at Citigroup as the financial crisis deepened, along with a dash of existential crisis thrown in. She and her peers were scrambling to stay relevant and employed. Top executives at her bank and others were defending themselves to regulators, clients, and their own employees. The promise of a rewarding career on Wall Street seemed increasingly elusive.

Growing up in Princeton, New Jersey, Kapoor had been an especially active adolescent, wide-ranging in her extracurricular interests—ballet, voice and piano lessons, swimming, editor of the school newspaper, admissions tour guide. Tennis became ...