The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption
About this audiobook
Find your most rewarding place in today’s economy. Award-winning author, researcher, and analyst Farai Chideya offers a practical guide to the ways in which work in America is changing and how you can navigate today’s volatile job market.
Since the Great Recession of 2007–2009, America’s work landscape has changed dramatically. Many people experienced long-term unemployment that eroded their savings, and the globalized economy means that not just jobs but entire career tracks are created and destroyed in front of our eyes. We’re living in an age of rapid disruption where we can barely adjust to one new reality before a new new reality comes along.
So how are we supposed to live a rewarding life—working fulfilling, stable jobs that cover our monthly expenses—in such a chaotic economy?
In The Episodic Career, Farai Chideya explores the landscape of employment in America. Profiling the rich, the poor, and people from every strata in between, Chideya seeks to understand the many kinds of work we do—not just job fields, but whether we seek to build institutions or seek social change while earning money. In addition, Chideya provides a self-diagnostic tool to help you find your work/life “sweet spot.” You’ll see how different types of people have navigated their careers and forged their own paths even in times of hardship. As a young reporter at Newsweek, CNN, and ABC, Chideya realized that her working-class Baltimore childhood and factors like Ivy League education affected how people viewed her, and she takes a frank look at stereotypes, employment discrimination, and how to create healthy workplaces. Ultimately, she asks how we as a country can sustain the American Dream.
Knowledge of the workplace is power over your career. The Episodic Career provides the big-picture vision of the world economy, as well as the particulars of salary, family, health, and lifestyle that you need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
About the author
Farai Chideya has combined media, technology, and sociopolitical analysis during her twenty-year career as an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and lecturer. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She was also a spring 2012 fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She frequently appears on public radio and cable television, speaking about race, politics, and culture. She was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated magna cum laude with a BA from Harvard University in 1990. Find out more at Farai.com.
Adenrele Ojo is a native Philadelphian who currently resides in Los Angeles by way of New York. She is a wearer of many creative hats: actress, voice-over artist, writer, producer, and photographer. Adenrele is a theater baby (daughter of the late founder of The New Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, John E. Allen Jr.) who received her BA in theater from Hunter College in New York and honed her skills at the William Esper Studio, studying Meisner under the auspices of Maggie Flanigan. No stranger to the stage, a few of her theater credits include August Wilson's Jitney (NJPAC); Bronzeville (Robey Theatre Co.); Joe Turner's Come and Gone (nominated for an L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Featured Actress); and The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza, directed by Shirley Jo Finney, which won the 2010 L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation Award & the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. She moves from stage to screen in such feature films as Within; Family; Elevate and Bathroom Vanities, a don't-judge-a-book-by-it's-cover comedy about one woman's unforgettable experience in a ladies' bathroom, directed by Christopher Scott Cherot (Hav Plenty and G), which Adenrele starred, cowrote and produced under the umbrella of her production company, NeW YiLLy Entertainment. Ojo's voice can also be heard on many audiobooks, which she has been recording since 2007 and for which she has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Some of her works include Katie Couric's The Best Advice I Ever Got, Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill, The Mothers by Brit Bennett (AudioFile Best of 2016 Fiction), Weapons of Mass Seduction by Lori Bryant-Woolridge, Oprah's Book Club 2.0 pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, The Healing by Jonathan Odell, Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott and Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan. When she is not recording, you can sometimes find her directing authors, celebrity actors, and other audiobook narrators.
