Daring Tale of Corporate Escape #3: From Corporate to Start-Up

Daring Tale of Corporate Escape #3: From Corporate to Start-Up

Printer-Friendly Version

by Pamela Skillings

An excerpt from Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams, by Pamela Skillings. Paperback: 352 pages, Ballantine Books, reprinted with permission.

Return to main article Swim in a Smaller Pond.

Name: Tania Mulry
Previous occupation: Vice president of product development at a large financial services firm
Current occupation: Senior vice president of product development at Teleflip, a technology start-up

"I don't know how I ended up in the corporate world," says Tania Mulry. "I guess I was always a bit of a generalist. I did everything kind of equally well and had no burning passion to pursue a particular career."

After college graduation, Tania ended up taking a job in investment banking and worked for four companies in three years, surviving reorganizations, acquisitions, and a near bankruptcy, She got tired of the turmoil and went looking for more stability. "I was ready to find a place where I could stay for several years, work really hard, and be appreciated." She wanted to buy a house, have kids, and set up a stable life.

She found what she was looking for in her next position. "I spent ten years at one of the world's most solid and stable companies." Along the way, she was promoted several times, had three kids, and kept right on moving up the ladder.

"Then, after my third maternity leave, I was inexplicably demoted," she recalls. Despite outstanding performance reviews and great relationships within the company, she was transferred into a group run by a manager who didn't know her and seemed to resent her presence.

"It was extremely unpleasant. I tried for a year and a half to make it work," she says. She tried to transfer to another department and took on extra work to demonstrate her value, but wasn't able to get her previous seniority level reinstated. "I realized that I was not going to change the situation," she says. "If they couldn't tell from their HR records that I was someone worth keeping and treating well, then it was probably not the company for me to stay with."

When she looked at her other career options, Tania knew she didn't want to go to another big company. "I just could not face starting over and learning to navigate a whole new bureaucracy." She thought about starting her own business, but didn't have an idea that inspired her. Besides, her family depended on her income. "The best plan seemed to be to go to work for a smaller business where I could take some kind of equity in the company," she recalls. "But I had no idea how to find those opportunities." She started networking as much as possible, making an effort to speak at conferences and to improve her visibility in the industry so that she could meet venture capitalists.

"At one industry conference, I sat down to have a beer with a consultant I had worked closely with in the past," she says. "He had just become the chief marketing officer for a start-up in Santa Monica, and I told him I was thinking about a change. Within a week, I was on a plane to go meet with the rest of senior management about a job."

They basically designed a job for her and gave her about sixteen business hours to make a decision about coming aboard. Luckily, Tania had already discussed the possibility with her husband, and they had decided they'd be willing to move for the right opportunity. "I didn't end up having to give up much in terms of income, but I did have to move my family across the country to a more expensive place," Tania says. "We figured we could get along in a smaller house for a while and we could give up owning three cars because I would be able to walk to the office."

Once the decision was made, things started to come together. "My husband's company transferred him to the Santa Monica area and it was actually a more lucrative opportunity for him as well. "I don't think I would go back to big company life," Tania concludes. "In my current job, there is a great feeling of ownership in the outcome that doesn't exist in larger companies."

Return to main article Swim in a Smaller Pond.

Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.

Pamela Skillings is a successful entrepreneur, a certified career coach, and the author of Escape from Corporate America: A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams, a career guide for entrepreneurs and other renegades. For more information, see her Website, Escape from Corporate America.

Maximize your career and job-search knowledge and skills! Take advantage of The Quintessential Careers Content Index, which enables site visitors to locate articles, tutorials, quizzes, and worksheets in 35 career, college, job-search topic areas.

Find a New Job

What:
Where:
jobs by

Job-Hunting Tools:

Career Tools:

Career Categories: