There’s more news today in the Wall Street Journal about Jodie Fisher, the femme who fataled the career of HP CEO Mark Hurd. Fisher, 50, is now working for her mother’s New Jersey staffing agency. (Maybe they can find a job for a recently dismissed CEO!) The stories of Fisher and her mother are mirror-image life lessons. Fisher’s mother, Polly McDonald (also a strikingly attractive woman), is the founder of TeleSearch Staffing Solutions , which provides temporary workers and other employees for hire. According to her bio, she has built a career in the personnel industry for more than 30 years. Fisher, however, wanted to be a movie star. So at around age 30, she lit out for Hollywood. Someone should have told Fisher that she was getting started about a decade too late, although even an early start also leaves 99 percent of the pretty, sexy girls who want to be movie stars looking for other ways to support themselves.
Fisher made a couple of erotic movies, and married and divorced a guy who was also casting about (he was, the Journal says, “an artist, model, and chef”). Then she made what looked like a good career move: doing events for HP. There was something strange about her duties, however. Her job was to guide Hurd to the most promising potential clients at corporate gatherings. Normally, this is done for a CEO by an account executive at the company. In a way, Fisher was just a freelance hostess. So here she is at 50 without a clear set of skills beyond her good looks and personality. Unless Fisher got enough money in the settlement with Hurd (don’t you bet he sent her some steamy e-mails?) to float her for the foreseeable future, thank goodness she has an entrepreneur mother to fall back on.
