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Public Service Announcement – The Severance Trap: What Wall Street Hopes You Don’t Know Severance agreements aren’t neutral documents. They’re surrender agreements drafted by armies of corporate lawyers to strip you of your voice and legal rights. My advice to anyone facing termination: * Do not sign anything immediately. You’re in shock and financially vulnerable—that’s…

Bloomberg published a lovely profile of Jane Fraser today, crediting her “serious political savvy” for Citi’s recent turnaround. What struck me isn’t what the story said. What struck me is what it didn’t. The piece praises Fraser’s ability to navigate Trump’s ego but never acknowledges that, just a few years ago, Citi was among corporate…

I worked for a large international bank and during my time there I suffered a miscarriage the day before my 3 month scan was due. I notified my employer who put me on 2 weeks sick leave assuming I would be back after 2 weeks, under the pressure of working for this toxic manager who…

Self-Investigation as Cover-Up Citi’s CEO stated in a public interview that Citi doesn’t need policies to tell us what bad behavior looks like. Meanwhile, the once comprehensive Ethics and Harassment policy has been revised multiple times, each version narrower than the last—not to protect employees, but to limit legal liability. Citi claims in litigation that…

I’ve been at Citi Private Bank for nearly 13 years, and have seen my share of chaos. But since 2021, the dysfunction is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. Leadership talks endlessly about “transformation,” but the reality inside is far worse than what’s acknowledged publicly. Citi has a long history of elevating the wrong leaders. A…

What Citi’s transformation narrative is built to obscure You could tell this story as a mere list of process failures—bad methodology, weak leadership, an underused tool. That version is true, but it misses the point. The story is what those failures have in common: an organization that is asking how to demonstrate that remediation is…