When a young lawyer asks Madeleine Johnson, vice president and general counsel of Southwest Airlines, what’s the best path to becoming the GC of a large company, she always has the same response: “Not the one I took.”

As an undergrad at Bryn Mawr College, Johnson majored in French. Upon graduation, she decided to continue her French studies in graduate school, focusing on medieval literature. But after a year of that, she realized she wanted to do something a little more current.