For Fortune Magazine writer, Anne Fisher, every day is a day at the office. That's fine with her since she works from home. She is able to work without distractions, and avoids a heavy midtown commute. A twenty-six year veteran with Time, Inc., she has definitely earned this balance of home and work.
Graduating from college early and then moving to New York, Anne began her writing career as a reporter for an insurance trade paper. She was paid a whopping $14,000.00 a year. Scraping by was not her style, however, and after writing up a book review she sent it to Barron and suggested they hire her as a book reviewer. Impressed with her review and her assertiveness, they accepted her offer.
Even as a young adult in the early seventies, Anne was keenly aware of career and management trends. Noting that major companies had been making strong efforts to hire and promote more women in largely male dominated fields-such as reporting and journalism-Anne seized the opportunity and applied with Time, Inc. At twenty years old, Anne was hired for Fortune Magazine as a generalist reporter.
Soon, Anne's ability to report "just the facts landed her in an unusual position: She became the only woman at Fortune to join a team of men who reported events in the auto industry. An awkward position, perhaps. But at six feet tall and an objective approach to her work, Anne had no problem seeing eye to eye with her colleagues. She spent over five years reporting in the usually male dominated industry.
Anne's interests continued to be in finance and management. So, once again she stood out from the crowd by writing a major feature titled, "What's Left of Reagonomics? which she described as a "nit-picky analysis of the Reagan economy". From this came a shift in her career as she moved from the auto industry to Wall Street. And, still in her twenties, she authored a book titled Wall Street Women.
It's her broad background and sharp eye for career and management trends that have led her to where she is now known: as the popular career writer for her own column, "Ask Annie". These columns, written weekly and bi-weekly for Fortune Magazine, Fortune Small Business, and Fortune online, are full of advice for mid- to upper-level professionals. She answers tough questions about anything from salary negotiations to workplace diversity.
One of the newest career trends she is answering questions on is telecommuting. Writing from her own home in a remote area of New York, Anne frequently touches on this issue, helping companies understand it and encouraging professionals to consider it as a work style.
After such an amazing writing career, and twenty-two years of working for Fortune, shouldn't Anne be working from a posh office in midtown New York, instead of from "way out in nowhere"? Well, if you ask her, she'll tell you: she wouldn't have it any other way.
