NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Editor's note: This story is from the CNN special "Stories: Reporter" which airs Sunday, July 3, at 7:30 pm EDT.
Let's be honest, Wall Street is still a boys club. Yes, there are women who break through the proverbial glass ceiling, but few of them run big hedge funds.
And then there's Renee Haugerud -- a woman who broke the mold and made millions, following anything but a conventional path. Today, Haugerud runs Galtere Ltd., a New York based hedge fund with a billion dollars in assets under management.
Haugerud's career began far from Wall Street. Her formative years were spent in rural Preston, Minnesota. Her father was the town sheriff who ran the local jail which was connected to the family home. Haugerud's bedroom was just steps from the prisoners' cells. Each evening, she helped her mother prepare and deliver meals to the inmates.
"At the time, it just seemed normal," Haugerud says. "I think it really gave me the opportunity to see that everything isn't always as it seems."
That ability to see opportunity where others don't has paid off big time. "I think I probably learned about risk in the jail," says Haugerud. She coupled that no-fear attitude with a critical lesson her father, who was also a farmer, taught her one day when he took her flying over corn crops.
"He said, 'Now we're in Iowa'. And I said, 'But Dad, we don't have any crops in Iowa. Why are you checking the corn crops in Iowa?' And he said, 'Well, there's this thing called the futures exchange.' I said, 'You mean you can sell this guy's corn without owning it?' And he said, 'Well, sort of.'"
From that day on, she was hooked.
Fast forward nearly two decades. After Haugerud graduated from college, she took a temp job with Cargill. She became a commodities trader and was swiftly promoted through the ranks over her 13 years with the company.
But she wanted more.
"I really looked at markets differently," Haugerud recalls. "I knew in order to flourish, I needed to have the freedom to do it my way." So she set out on her own, launching Galtere Ltd. hedge fund in New York City. But what she never expected was how hard it would be to raise money -- in part because she was a woman.
"If someone had told me that I had to do the exact same thing over again, they'd guarantee that I get here, I don't know if I'd have it in me," Haugerud told CNNMoney. In fact, a 2010 study from Washington University in St. Louis found Americans are willing to invest three times as much money in a firm led by a man than one run by a woman.
Haugerud fell more than a million dollars in debt trying to keep the company afloat. She quickly realized she needed help (and, she says, the support of men) and convinced her former employer, Cargill, to back her with a $60 million investment.
"As soon as they did that, everybody who had been watching started knocking on my door," Haugerud said.
Grant Jaffarian, the chief investment officer of Efficient Capital Management says his firm has invested up to $100 million with Galtere Ltd. and sees annual returns of between 8 and 12%. "Investing in Galtere is more than just investing in Renee," he says. "It's investing in the firm that she's built surrounding her logic, which is very innovative, and that's put her in the position to be one of the best traders in the world."
A study by Hedge Fund Research Inc. found that between 2000 and 2009, hedge funds managed by women produced almost twice the returns of those run by men. Nevertheless, women run only 3% of the roughly 9,000 U.S. hedge funds.
In an effort to change that, Haugerud and her husband recently donated $1.5 million to build a program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that teaches finance from the female perspective. It's a move Haugerud acknowledges is controversial -- but that's exactly what she wanted. "We need to shake up the financial industry significantly ... 2008 proved that," Haugerud says.
Even back on her family farm in Minnesota, Haugerud checks the corn crops to determine how the season looks and where to place her bets.
"This is my art. I love it. I wish I could sing and dance, but this is my music." 
Who needs to own a boring U.S. Treasury bond when you can buy an exciting tech stock and get a similar -- or in many cases, higher -- yield in the process?
