Freyda Sanders trained for jobs in a number of fields, but her experience teaching girls in a juvenile detention center led her to her life’s work in adolescent psychology. Sanders originally studied chemical engineering before getting a degree in labor economics from Columbia. But there were no jobs open to her in the field as a Jewish woman. Instead, she began teaching and earned a masters degree in education from Harvard. She took a teaching job at the Bergen County children’s detention center, working with girls who had committed offenses and were waiting for court appearances. Finding that the most important thing the girls needed from her was a listening ear, Sanders began studying psychology and earned another degree, beginning a twenty-year career as a school psychologist.