Not that the buxom entrepreneur is full of herself or anything, but she likens the position to that of a senatorial chief of staff. For the uninitiated, a quick recap: Tilton, who claims to be a billionaire, owns private equity firm Patriarch Partners, and her portfolio includes Spiegel Catalogs, Rand McNally, Stila Cosmetics, and many others - a portfolio with total revenues of $8 billion. She's done this largely by picking up distressed properties for a song, and then packaging them in unusual, highly opaque ways. All of which makes it next to impossible to figure out the financial particulars. Let's also point out that she's, well, not your average boss. Here's a snippet from a Forbes profile:
Go to her website. You'll learn that she's a fiercely smart, Yale-educated, hardworking single mom who learned her chops on Wall Street. Then she went off on her own, becoming a rare phenomenon: a female chief of a private equity firm, whose success has turned her into a very wealthy woman. "There's no question that I'm a billionaire," she assured me. Talk to former employees, and you sometimes get a very different story. They speak in whispers of a "terrifying" and "evil" boss, given to eruptions of rage, who exploits her femininity to throw off men, who threw herself a 50th birthday party where staffers did jello shots off her stomach and chest. When we asked her about these personal allegations, a spokesman wrote back, "We will not respond to anonymous, vague, deliberate and frankly sexist attempts to impugn Ms. Tilton's personal and professional reputation."
Think of the Sharon Stone character in "Basic Instinct" - in court papers a former employee said that Tilton would "repeatedly, and knowingly, [sit] down at business meetings in such a way that her short, tight 'mini skirts' pull up and display her crotch area to those persons who must face her and address her." Still interested in that executive assistant position? From the job description via DealBreaker (check out third from the last item):
Responsibilities will include, but are not limited to the following:• Manage Ms. Tilton's business and personal life in the manner of a Congressional/Senatorial Chief of Staff
• Liaise with the portfolio company executives
• Manage Ms. Tilton's travel and be available to travel at a moment's notice
• Provide briefs on all meetings and handle follow-up from high level meetings
• Work closely with finance, credit, human resources and communications departments to make certain Ms. Tilton is knowledgeable at all times about the state of business at the holding company level
• Meet and greet all clients, guests and visitors in a warm & friendly manner
• Travel with Ms. Tilton and top executives making certain all meetings and activities run smoothly, efficiently and effectively
• Have working knowledge of all companies in Patriarch's portfolio
• Be able to manage real estate properties owned by Ms. Tilton
• Provide back-up support to the Executive Assistant when necessary; run personal errands, personal shopping, and coordinate/interact with
household staff and vendors
• Manage daily health and well being of Ms. Tilton
• Maintain discretion with confidential information and documents at all times