For the last seven years, Jimmy Tran (MBA 2008) appeared to be well on his way along the professional path he’d set out for himself: He had risen to the level of vice president of a Fortune 150 company, the youngest member of the global executive committee, in an industry that was riding the crest of a wave of economic growth. And the job came with all the trappings, like a flexible schedule, unlimited paid time off, and access to Peloton bikes for morning or lunchtime workouts at the office gym.

Then COVID-19 happened, and on April 30, Tran became one of the millions of Americans to lose their job.

Tran had been on the opposite side of the table any number of times in his career, working on post-merger integrations and reducing redundancies. In those moments, “I kept telling myself it’s nothing personal, we just had to cut costs and achieve the synergies Wall Street was expecting,” he writes in a LinkedIn post called, “I Got Laid off and I’m Done Sugar-coating It.”

When it happened to him, Tran felt the sting. It took him weeks to be able to admit that the decision to leave the company wasn’t his to make.

“Getting laid off has a certain stigma. People assume you are not worth your pay or that your work product did not meet a certain threshold. I am slowly letting go of this weight and burden—and realize that it’s not personal. In fact, approximately 1 in 5 Americans have filed for unemployment as a result of COVID-19 (36 million and counting). I am part of this historic number but I also fully recognize that I come from a place of privilege.”

Now on reflection, Tran is grateful for the opportunity to recalibrate his sense of passion and purpose. Time is a finite resource, he writes, and this time has afforded him the chance to reinvent himself—an opportunity he’d been waiting for.

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