CHICAGO — Who is Corporate Erin? It’s a question not even her creator, comic Lisa Beasley, can easily answer for you.
Nor is Corporate Erin herself, the six-figure earning executive you might have seen pop up on your TikTok recently, likely to answer your question in a way that makes sense, so desperate is she to communicate minutiae of corporate life.
Even if you haven't seen her videos, you already know Corporate Erin or someone like her.
Corporate Erin called a company wide 9:00 a.m. Zoom meeting for something that could have been an email, and will walk you through it again at a ‘very high level’ in your upcoming one-on-one. Corporate Erin is passive aggressive, holier than thou, with a cadence that tends toward self promotion between every recalcitrant gulp. Corporate Erin casually - and perhaps not accidentally - dropped her bi-weekly take home salary and recently finagled your sweet company time to solicit donations for her new venture "The Millions of Me Foundation."
And however, valid your questions, trust she'll never actually answer it.
Everything about Corporate Erin, from her mannerisms to her inability to communicate anything of actual value, has become a painful symbol for millions of working people on TikTok who feel they encounter this exact person in their daily lives.
“This is SPOT ON. The corporate accent, the nonsense, the talking for 30 min and saying nothing,” one user noted.
Of particular interest for Corporate Erin's many TikTok followers is a dispassionate and predictable speech pattern, which could likely be heard in any number of board meetings or presentation across America. TikTokers, who are captivated her in much the same way Michael Scott's antics held horrific attention, have deemed Corporate Erin’s voice the “corporate accent” even calling her out for using the corporate gulp between buzzwords that mean nothing.
“The corporate word salad is so accurate,” another user said.
While Corporate Erin is triggering anyone with experience in corporate America, her creator Lisa Beasley is a longtime Chicago-based comedian. Beasley originally hails from Gary, Indiana, and has performed in comedy circuits throughout Chicago for more than a decade. Her impressions and work has been popular on TikTok before: Beasley's parody of former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot was turned into a show for teachers at the Laugh Factory in 2022. She's also performed in Black People Do Improv, HBOMax's South Side, NBC's Chicago MED on Netflix, The Blackening on Comedy Central and more.
The Corporate Erin character was first introduced in 2021, but has since catapulted to renewed popularity as Americans become seemingly more miserable with their professional lives with every passing year. A 2023 Gallup poll released by the Wall Street Journal just this week found Americans are unhappier at work than they have been in years.
It's an unhappiness Beasley experienced firsthand. Her stints as an independent contractor for corporations across many industries helped inspire the Corporate Erin character.
“You encounter a version of me in every workplace,” she told 13News.
But reach out to Beasley about her now viral Corporate Erin persona, and you must, true to form, circle back with Corporate Erin herself, who “took over social media for Beasley” as part of the comedian’s fictional Sabbatical.
“I’m the manager for the manager of logistics from Management MC Management. And for the purposes of today’s meeting, the reason I scheduled this Zoom for 9:30 this morning thank you so much for being here,” she explains, breathless, in one video, “is really just to explain my presence. So, I am taking over social media for Lisa Beasley, she’s on the Sabbatical. She currently doesn’t have the bandwidth and we can understand that.”
In the same way Beasley’s fellow Second City alum Stephen Colbert famously committed to playing a Bill O'Reilly-esque character even during congressional hearings, and whose refusal to break that character once prompted a devastated “Who are you?” from O'Reilly's own mouth during an interview, neither will Beasley concede to breaking character to talk about Corporate Erin. In much the same way your own boss may not take off the work mass to reveal their true selves underneath whatever performance they put on at work, neither will Beasley.
You want to talk to Corporate Erin? She speaks for herself.
And for many users on TikTok who can't look away from Corporate Erin's antics, in the same way America tuned in willingly to the idiocy of Michael Scott, the anxiety-inducing executive has become a necessary sponge soaking up all the things they wish they could say to their own boss. Because, for all her flaws, Corporate Erin differs from your boss in one key way: she can't actually fire you.
"I love corporate Erin. Even though she causes me anxiety because I live this everyday. I'm so invested," one user said.
13News was able to snag one of Corporate Erin’s infamous one-on-ones, and has her take on why she’s resonating with working people, her tips for finding workplace success, and if her employees ever got their money back from an ill-fated gift card giveaway.
"Go where you're accepted, not tolerated" | Getting candid(ish) with Corporate Erin
Corporate Erin: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me - a lot of people don’t.
13News: Why is that, do you think?
Corporate Erin (gulps in corporate): I think it makes people uncomfortable. Because, you know, they are not familiar with me. And sometimes, when people are not familiar with things, it makes them fearful, because they never know what I’m gonna do.
13News: Right. So, you’ve taken over social media for Lisa. Can you talk about that process?
Corporate Erin: So, Lisa was having a hard time selling her tickets to her show. She does a show every first Monday at the Laugh Factory in Chicago. And she really needed to have some creative marketing measures, because she needs money.
She thought it would be fun for her supporting team to take the lead, because we’re all over there with her at the Laugh Factory. She really did need a real break from showing her face online. And, it turned out, it works! Tickets have been selling.
13News: And Lisa’s already well established in the comedy scene, right?
Corporate Erin: She’s done a lot! You know, it would take just a Google for people to see...
One time she worked with Comedy Central, she was in a sketch that went viral called The Blackening that got turned into a movie. She’s been on every season of South Side on HBOMax. So she’s been doing her thing!
13News: And your “takeover” of her social media has really been resonating with people!
Corporate Erin: I think a lot of people are beginning to realize there are a lot of mes in their life. And I really like that. I think that people are beginning to see, wow. I have something in common with millions of people. And you know I keep thinking, where are these millions of people? I would love to see them.
13News: You’re coming along at a time when a lot of people are questioning the utility of certain things in our work life and in our workplace. Do you think that’s part of why Corporate Erin has been so resonant?
Corporate Erin: I definitely understand. I think that sometimes when we take on these roles, it comes with familiarity of the people who often run these roles.
The feedback I’ve gotten is sometimes people say that I drag on projects to justify my salary.
And I don’t think that’s the case at all. You know, I really do value the circle back, follow-up, close loop process and sometimes things take a long time!
Now, some people think we’re wasting time and that we’re wasting resources. But I don’t think that at all.
13News: You had a bit of a scandal at work when you tried to give people a Starbucks gift card. Can you tell me what went wrong there? You were pretty open, I thought, about your scandal.
Corporate Erin: (Nods several times) I love coffee. (Shows mug) And I used to go to Starbucks every day - sometimes twice a day - and I formed a bond with the people that work there.
And, you know, a lot of our employees wanted to call for a boycott at Starbucks and I missed that memo. I bought 30,000 gift cards from Starbucks through our procurement team. And, you know, our employees were outraged. I got called in, I took accountability, and I sent them back.
13News: Have they gotten their money back like you said they would?
Corporate Erin: So the way that works is that when they input and request for them to go through reimbursement (corporate gulp), it’ll show back up on their check within 12 to 96 weeks.
So, they don’t have it yet. But our teams are working..they will see it on their checks eventually. But! If you come to the office - they can have coffee there!
13News: I think you bring up a lot of really good points. I meant to ask you about Lisa specifically, she grew up in Gary, correct?
Corporate Erin: She did.
13News: Has she gotten any response since you took over her social media from fellow Hoosiers or people from Indiana?
Corporate Erin: Oh, absolutely. She has several classmates from Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts where she went to high school. They’ve always known her to be this way. A lot of them - I’m seeing messages saying wow, the world finally gets to see Lis for who has always been, along with her best friends from Gary!
Her mom is still in Gary. And her mom doesn’t really care as much, because she still owes her so much money.
Most importantly, I think the thing that she wants linked the most, is that her and Michael Jackson are both from Gary, Indiana and they’re both icons. So, she’s very excited to see that comparison unfold!
13News: Is Corporate Erin similar to anyone in Lisa’s life?
Corporate Erin: You know we have a one-on-one every week and she was confiding in me and she was telling me that she has a lot of horror stories from the corporate world.
Lisa worked largely as a freelancer, because she was a graphic designer to grow her acting career. So, when you’re a freelancer, you find yourself in several different independent contracting contracts with companies.
So, unfortunately, she has seen the likes of me in every single industry. And every single project.
I tried to get it out of her. I was like, Who is the person? And she said, well. It’s all of you. And I said, well, it can’t be all of us! It’s not me, right.
But she’s worked with several Fortune 500 companies. There’s this pivotal role that people seem to fill that it’s, its’ really astounding. And I think people need to question - what are the origins of this role? How do we all come to this common language? And who’s gonna notice that using this common language is a barrier for people who don’t know this language?
13News: What is your number one tip for people at work?
Corporate Erin: Survive. You know my number one is survive. So what I do is. I have emotional detachment okay, so we’re all on this floating rock. We are. And, you know, we have to pay for things to survive because that’s the way they’re made to be.
Everyone doesn’t make $8,500 every two weeks like me, okay? And everybody doesn’t have a husband who is the Global VP of All Finance and a doctor.
So, I understand that people have to work. Great. Ask questions.
But understand that when you start to ask questions, that can rub some people the wrong way and start a tense environment.
People who just kind of go along with the flow, and say, you know what I’m not here for feelings, I’m just here to get my check. You know, fine. Just get a job done and develop a work-life balance to work, where work is at work and home is at home.
When it starts to come into home, when your heart starts to beat fast at night because you have to go into work in the morning, work is at home.
So, take note of that in your body when work is pressuring you, and understand that this world is vast and you may want to.
I will never tell people to stay where they are if it’s hurting them. I will enforce all of my employees to stay here, because we need them for our clients, but! For other people if you’re truly not happy with the way people are talking to you, and the way people are treating you, you really need to evaluate your autonomy that you have.
You have freedom as a person to make decisions.
But the thing is, it will be hard. It's not easy deciding to leave an environment where it's the status quo, and this is how things go. When you go outside of that, the opportunities are fewer, and it's a harder road. So just understand that if you do step away from the workforce, that you may have a hard time finding a path that's right for you, because these paths are not created, the paths are created for me.
But number one, your job is to survive. And once you notice that surviving is getting in the way of you living, you might wanna find a path to help you thrive.
13News: Well, thank you so much for saying that. Is there anything else that you think is important for people to know as you're meeting people in this particular moment?
Corporate Erin: My thing is, we're all here right? These companies are not going away. Even though, if you do check some of the stocks, boy, are they losing billions by the day. It's starting to feel like the structures are not working, and they're gonna be adamant about making it work.
So, the thing that I that I would influence for everyone is just to ask more questions, and, you know, keep your eyes open.
When we think about all of the money that these companies are going through, and we think about the processes that they're working behind the doors...that's a lot of money for millions of mes to be running the show.
So, I think it's time that we share space and we open up who gets to do what.
You know, sometimes I do feel the pressure of having to start off every meeting, you know.
Sometimes I do feel the pressure of having to run everything, you know. I mean, I know I do it best, and I think I can do it better. But, you know, sometimes I do wish that the structures allowed for more people to participate.
This interview has been condensed for clarity.
