The Baby Boomer Renaissance: The Boomer Chronicles

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The Boomer Chronicles

How A Top Executive Recovered from his Firing

Posted: 29 Feb 2012 05:46 AM PST

Do you ever think you’re ‘too big to fail’? That you are so ultra-important that you could not be fired? Well, James Kunen probably felt that, as director of communications for Time Warner. A few years ago he was fired from his lofty executive post after 20 years on the job. He was angry, and probably felt a lot of other emotions, too. After making the initial recovery from the shock, Kunen assessed his life and thought about what made him happy. He eventually found work teaching English as a Second Language. He was paid much, much less than he made as an executive, but he’s happy. Soon he found himself writing a book about his firing and his rebirth — Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life (Lyons Press).

By the way, if Kunen’s name sounds familiar, you might recall the book The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary in 1968. At age 19, Kunen wrote that book, an account of the student uprisings at Columbia University.

Here’s a video of an interview with James Kunen.