How ‘Working Girl’ Changed My Career Trajectory

The night I lost my last job in corporate fashion, I walked home crying with an overflowing cardboard box. This had been my biggest role and my highest salary to date: working for the female head of a then-popular flash-sale-shopping website.

I’d approached the job with giddiness and hope. Four months after I started, my charismatic boss took a mental health sabbatical and didn’t return. She was replaced by the 26-year-old chief financial officer, who promptly told me he was proudly self-sufficient.

“Sorry, but you’re just not necessary here anymore,” I recall him coldly telling me.

It was 2012. I was 31 years old and had a new disdain for an industry I’d once loved. I’d been the executive assistant to CEOs in big-name brand fashion companies for a decade, and the only job I was qualified for was as someone else’s right hand. My résumé was filled with leaders I’d reported to and mostly reflected things I’d accomplished for others but never for myself.

Later that night, I called my new boyfriend (and future husband) to tell him the news. Shortly after, I fell asleep, fully clothed, watching one of my favorite films, “Working Girl,” the 1988 Mike Nichols classic starring Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford, which turned 35 in December. When I put on the DVD that night, as I had many times before, it was purely cathartic during a moment that felt like the end of the world. I didn’t know it would help to ignite a whole new beginning.

In the film, Griffith is executive assistant Tess McGill, who is passionate, smart and dreams of a career beyond serving coffee. However, her life and career are stifled by men and women who lie, cheat and hold her back. In one early scene, she’s tricked by a male colleagues into a situation she believes to be a job interview. Instead, a slimy stockbroker (Kevin Spacey) shows her a porn video.

When she gets a new job working in Mergers and Acquisitions for the beautiful and successful Katherine Parker (Weaver), she finally feels heard ― Until she learns her new mentor is more manipulative than the men, and, unlike them, she’s pretending to be something she’s not. After learning her boss stole her idea, Tess takes advantage of a situation (a ski accident that conveniently ties up Katherine) by pretending to be an executive. Tess reclaims her idea and finds power and love in the process.

The…