Page 117 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

young people toward the knowledge necessary for them to have a
successful future. The first step toward greatness came when she listened
to her inner voice and heeded its call.
A great example of this is my friend Theresa Park. Park’s family wanted
her to pursue a legal career, and she succumbed to their wishes. After
double-majoring in political science and creative writing at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, she went on to Harvard Law School. Upon grad-
uation, she made her family proud by taking a job as a corporate lawyer in
a prominent firm in California. Park was earning great money in an impres-
sive career, but after fifteen months she was unfulfilled and disappointed.
The money and prestige just weren’t enough—Park had no passion for being
a lawyer. When her husband, who was also a lawyer, accepted a job in New
York City, she gave herself permission to consider trying something new.
Park had always loved books, and she believed that good ones have the
power to make the world a better place. She knew she wanted to have
something to do with creating books, but she did not necessarily want to
be the one to write them. After thinking about it and studying the way
books are created, Park realized that what she really wanted to do was help
aspiring writers bring their stories to life. She became fascinated with the
role literary agents play in the publishing industry, and so she decided to
abandon her lucrative legal career and become a literary agent. After all,
New York City is the literary capital of the country; surely she would have
no trouble finding a job there.
Park studied the industry and reached out to working agents for
guidance. Few responded, but some of their assistants did offer advice,
telling her that she’d have to start at the bottom of the pecking order and
work her way up. It was a rocky road, but at last Park found a small agency
willing to give her a job as an assistant: a glorified secretary. “I think they
saw how passionate I was about wanting to be in the business,” Park
recalled. “After all, I was making a major financial sacrifice to get my foot
in the door.” Her salary was only $18,000—less than half what her former
secretary had made at the law firm—but although the pay was low and the
work hardly glamorous, Park loved her new job.
After nearly a year spent shuffling through mountains of manuscripts
from hopeful authors and finding nothing that really stood out, Park
stumbled upon a story that captured her interest and her heart. It was a
love story written by an unknown twenty-eight-year-old pharmaceutical

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