[2] She was commissioned by the Navy during World War II as a member of the first group of officer candidates to qualify with WAVES at Smith College.
[4] The couple lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, for the first two years of their marriage while her husband was stationed in the city as a captain in the ferry division of the Air Traffic Control.
[2] She worked for Esquire and Coronet in Chicago after the war as their news stand promotion manager and later as their west coast representative,[2] when she moved to New York City with the magazine, where she spent the majority of her career.
[5][6] Welch planned to write a book with Caroline Bird and Catherine Shipe East about women who established legal precedents using Title VII, but it was never published.
[9] Welch wrote an article about this phenomenon instead and eventually published the book, which aimed to help women advance their careers when they were unable to rely on the "old boy" networks enjoyed by men.
[4][9] While researching for the book, she discovered internal networks at companies including Exxon, General Electric, NBC, Newsweek, ABC-TV, and Reader's Digest where women could exchange information, invite speakers to lead discussions on topics such as sex discrimination in the workplace and support each other.