Vanita Capobianco was senior director of HR technology operations at Paramount when her position was eliminated in 2024. She had been with the company — through its various incarnations as CBS Corporation, ViacomCBS, and finally Paramount — since 2014.
A decade of promotions, system rollouts and cross-border implementations, gone in a single conversation.
'When I realised someone could put my name on a spreadsheet and change the trajectory of my life without me having a say, a light bulb went off in my head,' Capobianco toldBinghamton University.
She described hitting her own 'rock bottom'. And then, rather than quietly updating her LinkedIn and moving on, she did something that surprised even her. She started a podcast.
Laid Off to Lift Offlaunched in late 2024 with a simple format: real conversations, 20 minutes or less, with people across industries who had been through a layoff. Capobianco found her early guests by scrolling LinkedIn and TikTok for anyone posting candidly about losing their job.
The first episode was her own story. It remains one of the most listened to.
'We see it in the news all the time, but if you've never been through a layoff, it can feel very lonely,' she said. 'Not everyone truly understands the pain of not knowing where that next paycheck is going to come from.'
What struck Capobianco most, as the episodes piled up, was not the grief — she expected that. It was how many guests arrived at the same conclusion independently. When your entire identity is wrapped up in your job title, unemployment does not just take your income. It takes your sense of self.
That realisation, she said, was the one that changed how she thought about rebuilding.
Capobianco graduated from Binghamton University's School of Management in 2009 with a degree in business administration, concentrating in marketing and leadership. She later earned a master's in human resource management from Pace University.
Source: International Business Times UK
