TARYN SMITH

Taryn Smith, 29, Retail Coordinator. 

Essentially your executive assistant, whom you hired a year ago out of the b-school at Stanford, not because you needed an assistant so much, but because she is very smart and shows a lot of leadership potential (she was the head of the Graduate Minority Student Council at Stanford, and won a prestigious prize for entrepreneurship).  The fact that her resume came through Mark Naismith, a Stanford alum, didn’t hurt her cause.  At $50K she is making far more than your typical coordinator, but far less than her fellow MBA classmates.  She has often told you that she is not earning enough money to make ends meet.

• Salary: $50,000