The average voter doesn't know that Carly Fiorina spent most of her pre-Hewlitt-Packard career in marketing & sales.
As someone who spent decades in the corporate world, may working with top notch marketing reps, I have nothing but praise for how Mrs. Fiorina developed her career. While in college, she worked summers as a secretary at Kelly Services, a job that helped her get at a very young age a broad view of business types & needs. Between college & getting her graduate degrees, she swiftly rise from secretary/receptionist to broker at Marcus & Millichap, one of the country's leading commercial real estate brokerage firms, another position that gave her the opportunity to shine - which she did - and gain further knowledge of corporate America. Very savvy steps up the career ladder.
Anyone who's worked with successful marketing reps knows that the best are consummate storytellers. It is their bread & butter. And the better they tell tales their potential customers can relate to, the more successful they are.
A tip of my hat to Carly's business savvy. That said, it wasn't until the second debate, experiencing Carly calling out the president & Hillary Clinton, defying them to watch the same video she did, the one she described so graphically, that her storytelling spinning skill hit home. Because the video she continues to insist she saw apparently exists only in her mind. Even Fox News says it doesn't exist. But she continues to say otherwise. So, at worse, she flat-out, flagrantly told an emotionally inflammatory lie crafted to stir people's hearts; at best, it was, shall we say, wishful thinking on her part. Nah,let's admit it - she lied. She told a brazen, incendiary lie, but nothing about her - not her face, not her words, not her delivery - gave a suggestion of anything deceitful.
Which brings me to a few minutes ago. I just was at the website that shares her "bootstrap" story. And there it is again - stunning prevarication with the gloss of wide-eyed wonder at her rise through the ranks, from lowly secretary at a "small" real estate firm (gag me with a spoon) to peerless leader of a Fortune 500 company - in spite of its old boy network that distained the thought of a female at the top.
Where to start?
Oh, yeah - with that "small" real estate firm. Excuse me, there was never anything small about the firm founded by George M. Marcus & William A. Millichap. From Day 1, they set out to revolutionize their industry - real estate brokerage (not cozy cottages or family homes) - by introducing systems that worked on multi-levels, including matching best properties with pre-qualified buyers. As a marketing writer, I'm left scratching my head at why Mrs. Fiorina felt it necessary to add the word "small" - the story works just as well without it, while including it makes her out to be... misleading, at best.
As for the H-P board that was so dead-set against seeing a woman succeed at the head of their boys club company - well, the other person being considered for the position, the one who lost out to Carly, was (drum roll, please)... another woman, Ann Livermore, a longtime H-P hire who stayed on long after Mrs. Fiorina's departure. So much for sexism.
Anne Livermore
Exec VP, H-P Technologies Solutions Group
I find the whole "secretary to ceo" thing to be a bunch of baloney. So, she worked as a secretary over her college summers. She never says it, but her whole ballyhooing the "lowly stenographer to lofty ceo" can leave the impression she meant within H-P. Because her work record isn't any different than millions of other successful execs, many of whom could have web sites titled "flipping burgers to cfo" or "house painter to coo."
To think I once thought Carly Sneed Fiorina might be the salvation of the GOP. She knows how to spin a great tale, how to leave people with a good feeling about her & what she's selling. She's a consummate sales rep.
Will look more later, but have had enough for now. Can only take her in small doses.
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