When Cathy Engelbert started at Deloitte nearly 30 years ago, she was hard-pressed to find many female mentors among its top leadership ranks. Only 7 percent of Deloitte’s partners and principals were women at the time, a statistic that prompted the accounting firm to launch a major initiative several years later, in 1993, aimed at boosting its retention and advancement of women.

Decades later, that effort appears to be paying off. Last week, Engelbert officially took over as Deloitte’s new chief executive, making her the first woman to helm any of the country’s major professional services firms. Her election as leader of Deloitte’s 65,000 U.S. employees is, she says, “a testament to what we started back then coming to fruition today.”

Engelbert spoke with The Post about her own career trajectory, and some of the walls she’s seen crumble (or merely teeter) for women employed in an industry long seen as an old boy’s club.