"When you're a younger sister, it's nice," she said. "You have a big brother to take care of you, to protect you and also to teach you a little bit about street fighting."

Growing up, she learned how to play "stoop ball" and take public transportation.

It wasn't until she went to college that she realized most children didn't grow up the way she did – she discovered most people traveled by car instead of taking the bus and not everyone lived in an apartment, for example.

"When you're growing up, you think that your environment is the whole world," she said. "[Going to college] was seeing the world from a very different perspective. And it was positive, it was a very positive experience."

As a young woman, she also learned independence. While her brother attended Hunter College in Manhattan's Upper East Side with the goal of becoming a social worker, Matz headed to upstate New York to attend Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

"There were not very many women there at the time," she said. "I feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to go to college. Even though it was a public school in New York, I had a great education. My parents were very supportive. I think they always knew I was pretty independent and headstrong."

Appointed by President Obama as NCUA Chairman in 2009, Matz is now serving her second term on the NCUA board and said she always knew she wanted to be in charge. But as a child, she thought she would become a teacher.

"When I went to college, that thought disappeared pretty quickly," she said. "I wanted to lead an organization. I felt like I had very good organizational skills, even at an early age, and I had confidence that I could make quick decisions, but they were usually pretty good decisions. I knew whatever I did, I wanted to run something."

Matz was one of the few women in the school, but said she fit in easily with both genders and is still close friends with some of her former female classmates today.

"There were not very many [women] who picked that track," she said. "I think the ratio was seven or eight to one, so it was a heavily male-dominated field. There was never any question that when I graduated, I was going to be in the workforce and probably work my entire career, that I was very career-oriented. That's not to say that [being a] stay-at-home mom is not a good choice, but for the peer group I had, that was not something we considered. Most of us went on and got additional degrees and never considered not having a career."

During what was considered a formative time in America, when the effects of the Women's Rights Movement were just coming to fruition, Matz said she wasn't necessarily influenced by a rapidly changing society and the growing acceptance in America of women working. Rather, she said, she was just being true to who she was at the time.

While she felt that once she got to college, women and men were on equal ground, she said she quickly learned that it wasn't that way in the workplace.

After working for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Matz wanted to get involved in the policy side rather than the implementation side of government programs, so she packed up and headed to the nation's capital.

There, she was offered a position as a legislative assistant for a member of Congress, Peter Peyser, who served three terms as a Republican and two terms as a Democrat.

"I was the only professional woman in the office and at that time, working on Capitol Hill, you really had very few female legislative assistants. Very few," she said. "And it was tough because the other women in the office didn't welcome me. It was tough working in an office where there was a lot of resentment."

Later, after working for the Joint Economic Committee for six months, she was informed by her superior that she had been paid significantly less than the men on the staff. Her salary was then doubled.

Eventually, Matz left the workforce to start a family.

"Working mothers are a whole different category," Matz said. "Initially, I came back part-time and I felt like I had one foot in one world and one foot in another world. I wasn't doing either well and so I left the workforce and was home for a few years. Generally, you're expected to do a full time job in fewer hours and you get paid for fewer hours, and then you go home and you have your whole childcare situation. So I found working part-time very difficult."

She said despite the support she received from colleagues for staying home while her children were young, finding a job later on was difficult.

"Everyone says, 'Oh that's great. You're home with your kids. What a nice thing to do.' But then they don't want to hire you afterwards," she said. "It was really through a friend of my husband's who needed a chief of staff. I had a lot of experience, I had done a lot of research, I had written a lot of articles; still it was very hard to get back in the workforce. I always let women know that. Being home is great, I wouldn't change it, but know that it's really hard to get back in again."

Matz has made significant strides in her career and her home life since then. Her two children are both grown and married to wonderful spouses, she said. She isn't a grandmother yet, but said someday when she's retired, her hope is to travel to see her children and their future children. She also wants to spend more time in Washington, the city she has called home for decades. Matz said she loves it so much there that she has no desire to relocate.

As the first person to serve two terms on the NCUA board, Matz helped create a program that assists low-income credit unions by offering free consulting and training services. She said she has worked hard to make the NCUA a place where people want to work, and has in the past called the agency one of the most transparent federal government organizations.

While her term officially ended in April, there are no talks of replacing her yet.

Matz said she has not yet planned her own next step, and is just grateful for the opportunities that brought her to where she is today. After years of hard work during a time when most women were expected to stay home, she is happy to see how far women have come.

However, she noted it is "hard to believe" and "disheartening" to think that women today still face some of the challenges she faced so many years ago.

"That was a difficult time in terms of not being able to have camaraderie with other women in the office," she said. "But I have to say that after that [time in the U.S. House of Representatives], I felt like the female network that I've had has been so strong, and those women have really supported each other and helped each other, so I haven't really experienced that again."