Pretty Young Professionals: Your Guide To The Workplace

For most of us, the path ahead is as clear as it can be: graduate and proceed to enter and thrive in the fast-paced, professional world in your field of choice.
 
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that.
 

The four co-founders of Pretty Young Professional, a new media start-up targeting young professional women, would know. Working in Management Consulting in NYC, they began encountering challenges in the workplace that they had not anticipated—from dealing with a bad boss, to handling criticism and feedback constructively. To their surprise, they found that most of the solutions to these challenges were not in the workplace itself.
 
The idea behind the start-up was initially rooted in a casual conversation between two PYP co-founders Caroline Ghosn ’08, and Amanda Pouchot, UC Berkeley ’08. The two have been best friends since day one on the job.  While re-grouping at the water cooler after a particularly difficult day at work, Amanda asked, “What would I do without you?” And, in that moment, they realized that not everyone was fortunate enough to have a peer or mentor to share experiences with and draw insight from. To fix that, they created Pretty Young Professional:  a safe, helpful, comfortable space where young professional women can go to and get their questions answered.
 
PYP is an online magazine providing guidance and support to women who are either currently employed or who are in the process of seeking professional roles. With articles ranging from how to master a job interview (“Interview: Insider Tips & Tricks”), to interning at a start-up (“Top 10 Characteristics of a Small Team Intern”), PYP aims to provide help and support for almost any difficulty a woman can face when navigating the professional world.
 
“I personally read The Economist on one hand and Vogue in the other, and there seems to be nothing in-between that is a one-stop shop,” Ghosn explained. PYP’s tried to bridge that gap with a style component tailored to young women dressing for professional situations, from any ordinary work day to chic office parties, run by Jessica Lee ’08, founder of the deliciously addictive StyleStalk.
 
The career profiles posted on the website are equally beneficial to aspiring professional women. This section features anonymous counts of life in a specific profession. Bitingly honest and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, these job descriptions are extremely useful to young women who are in search of what kind of professional path they wish to pursue and who could use an objective first-person perspective.
 
Let’s face it, girls: In this day and age, it really comes down to that one website that gives us everything we need from advice and guidance to entertaining anecdotes (much like Her Campus!). Charming and easy-to-read www.prettyyoungprofessional.com is quickly becoming one of those go-to sites.
 
With shout-outs in Forbes Woman and The Huffington Post, PYP is well on its way to garnering the attention and viewership that it deserves. In the meantime, I recommend checking out “Three Steps to Un-procrastinate Your Life”—I, for one, could definitely use it.