Disillusioned With Finance, She Gave the Furniture Business a Try

Upon entering the working world, Josefina Londono had a feeling of disconnect. In 2019, she started a career in wealth management for a New York-based firm after graduating from George Washington University with a degree in finance.

Her schooling had led her to imagine how her career might take shape, but what she found was quite different.

“You’re just supposed to be this little robot that follows everything,” she said. “The way that you talk, the way that you dress, the way that you behave — everything is being taken from you. My identity was being stripped from me. I couldn’t pinpoint where and how but I just wasn’t myself.”

She compared the experience to the Apple TV series, “Severance.”

“Corporate America feels like that sometimes,” she said.

The television series features characters who have their brains altered to separate their working selves from their nonworking selves. When they’re at their jobs they have no knowledge of life outside the office, and at home they know nothing of work. This “severance” leaves characters forever feeling incomplete, living out two separate and equally dissatisfying lives.