I am finally doing it! I thought long and hard about it, but I decided now is the time. I am writing my career life story, something many of my female mentees have requested. It seems that the olden days of consulting, way back when, (women need-not apply), is of interest to women who now have entree into most board rooms.
So here’s a preview, a couple of the first pages from my story:
I have heard many friends say that their 20s are particularly hard. Mine were a roller coaster for which I was ill-prepared to survive. Until I met my first husband. At work.
My first job out of college at the City of Los Angeles gave me entry into many job opportunities. I often looked at the interoffice job postings, and many months into my Junior Administrative Assistant stint at the Special Projects Public Works (SPPW) one appeared. This was for a “Counselor” at one of the many Jack Kennedy-developed programs designed to deal with poverty, employment, and youth. The overall concept was called the “New Frontier” and it dealt with all the ills of hunger, unemployment, youth employment, education, and anything else you can come up with describing our dichotomy of economic and social circumstances in the United States. Out of this concept grew the Peace Corps, the Youth Conservation Corps, and the Neighborhood Youth Corps.
I was lucky enough to get transferred to the Neighborhood Youth Corps program sponsored by the City of Los Angeles. This program’s objective was to provide job training, education, and social/medical care for disadvantaged kids. Very noble goals, very unreachable in a city-sponsored effort. I became an administrator, counselor, teacher, and overall mother hen to 40 “disadvantaged kids” aged 17 to 24. Remember, I was 21 at the time, so many of these kids were older than I. I was to place them in city-created jobs in various departments, including the Mayor’s Office, the Transportation Department, and our NYC Office, to name a few. The best and most presentable, educated, and well-spoken were put in the Mayor’s Office. The rough-around-the-edges in the group got placed in Transportation, which was the motor pool for City cars.
Many kids didn’t make it. Like the very handsome, tall young man I placed in Transportation. He immediately stole a car, went out on a joyride, and was kicked out of the program.
I had to teach these difficult kids, which was part of my job. What did I decide to teach? Poetry!! Actually, it was a very good experience because I was able to learn about Langston Hughes, a terrific Black poet from the 1960s. His work about the Black Experience is still very relevant and rich today. The kids loved it and wrote great poems, with prompts such as, “What does it feel like to be you?” or “The best person I ever met.”
We were located in a converted industrial space about four blocks east of city hall. It was a dump, cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I was happy and felt like I was doing something way above my head, which I enjoyed.
Early on, I met some of the young men working at the office with which we shared space, the Concentrated Employment Program. This effort was designed to place unemployed disadvantaged men in jobs. That’s it. A big undertaking, but all of JFK’s programs were big, god love the man; he was out to fix and change the world, mostly by sleeping with beautiful women.
Steve, my husband-to-be, was getting his Master’s in Psychology at the time and acting as a counselor to these very rough men. He, I, and another of his peers, Jerry, became friends, since we were the only 20-something professionals in the building. I talked to Steve about psychology a lot because I was in therapy and trying to heal from a very difficult childhood and the death of my father. It doesn’t sound like the conversation of a young boy and girl getting to know one another. But that’s what happened.
He was smitten; I not so much. He was a short, not unattractive, sorta pudgy Jewish kid from the Valley, the type I had avoided most of my life. But he became a good friend and confidant during some very difficult years for me. He kept asking me out, and I told him, “I have more boyfriends than jobs. I don’t want to mess up or lose this job.” Even then, I had some very good boundaries. I told him if he ever left his job at the CEP, I might consider a date. After about a year, he turned in his three-week notice. He was going to begin his apprenticeship at the Primal Institute, a very ‘70s type of therapy popularized by Arthur Janov in the “Primal Scream.” The Primal Scream (1970) by Arthur Janov introduced Primal Therapy, a controversial theory that neurosis stems from repressed childhood trauma, which can be cured by reliving and expressing these painful, “primal” memories through intense emotional release, often involving screaming. The book, which became a cultural phenomenon, uses case studies to argue that this catharsis can resolve lifelong psychological and physical ailments by addressing their root cause, challenging conventional psychotherapy. Scream away your pain, that was the four-word explanation of the practice.
Steve got a new job, and I got Steve. He moved in with me in my very cute and fastidiously appointed first one-bedroom apartment in West Los Angeles, right off of Beverly Glen, a lovely and safe neighborhood for 20-somethings just starting out.
I knew from the beginning I was choosing Steve not for the passion but for his level-headed, professionally goaled life. He would make a good husband, and I liked him a lot. He was very sweet, funny, personable, and had a stutter. There is something about a stutterer that is very vulnerable, and I loved that about him. We lived together for maybe six months, then I got scared. Was I wasting precious time? I was 24, the average age for marriage at that time. I gave him the ultimatum: marry me or get out. He decided he would rather get married (which I’m sure he was not looking to do) than lose me.
One day, after yet another “please don’t steal a city car” pep talk, I realized my emotional bandwidth was stretched to the breaking point. It was time for a change. I was getting burnt out at the NYC. The kids had so many problems, and I didn’t have good boundaries; I got too involved in their problems and tried to solve them. I still do that to this day. I started looking around for new jobs and found one at Cal Arts. Buzz Price was the Chairman of the Board. This is how I secured my first consulting job at Economics Research Associates, one of the only female professionals in a cadre of at least 25 males.
I gave notice at my job with the City of Los Angeles, and on my last day, my boss took me out to lunch. He was chubby, tall, Jewish, mid-forties, with a wife and a flock of children—basically a walking résumé “safe authority figure. An important man in City government. A fatherly presence. A man I trusted.
We went to the Biltmore Hotel, downtown, with white tablecloths and heavy silverware, the kind of room where deals get sealed and careers feel momentarily legitimate. He was warm and gracious, telling me how well I’d done at the Neighborhood Youth Corps. I soaked it up. Validation! Closure! A graceful exit!
And then, right at the end—when I was still glowing from the praise—he looked at me seriously and suggested we take the conversation upstairs.
Of course.
There it was. The plot twist no woman needed explained. My first dirtbag checkpoint on my professional journey. I remember thinking, Wait—was this the job? Was this the benefit package? It didn’t even make logistical sense. He’d barely seen me, worked in City Hall with a young attractive secretary and a view, while I was housed in the dingy warehouse miles away. He waited until I was leaving. A full year later. But somehow, here we were.
That lunch permanently rewired something in me. Admiration flipped to disbelief in record time. It wasn’t just disappointing—it was clarifying. Men, I learned, were nothing if not consistent. Beware! Doing an outstanding job was not enough. You were expected to put out. And I didn’t. Not for my bosses, anyway.
