In the summer of 1982, I worked for Donald Regan, then the U.S. secretary of the treasury under President Reagan. I was about to go into my final year at Wharton and, having worked many summers at Estée Lauder Companies since age 13, was no stranger to office life. But in this role my title was “special assistant to the special assistant”—not what I had anticipated.
A version of this article appeared in the May 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review.
