Melissa Hopkins, a popular and respected figure, was blindsided and stunned when she was made redundant as chief marketing and audience officer at Seven West Media.
At 50, this was the first time in a stellar career, including VP marketing at Optus, global head of marcoms at Vodafone and roles at advertising agencies.
“Pretty new into a role - I was bought in to drive transformation, change, help modernise a legacy industry, shake things up,” she said in a post on LinkedIn. “Little did I think I would be part of the shakeup.”
Hopkins, whose work is her life, felt “rejection and worthlessness”.
She was part of a redundancy wave at Seven West Media in June which also washed away chief revenue officer Kurt Burnette and head of sport Lewis Martin.
She revealed her feelings on being made redundant in a comment on a book, All The Cool Girls Get Fired by Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill, a roadmap for what to do after being fired.
Hopkins was overwhelmed by an avalanche of messages of “condolences, messages of shock, concern, mantras”.
Three weeks before she had spent two weeks in hospital suffering a major depressive relapse. She has been open about her mental health and is a champion in the industry.
“In my roles both in Australia and globally I have made many people redundant,” she said.
“Most the sad casualties of a cost out, the odd one convenient for the low to mid level performer .
“I had survived them all, I was a high performer, high achiever, driver of change and builder of culture.
“I never took this for granted, my imposter syndrome real - but it was somehow also validation that my commitment, workaholic and marriage to my jobs protected me.”
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