Before Sarah Cooper satirized President Donald Trump with her TikTok lip-synchs of him, she was parodying the corporate world from her perch as a designer and manager at Google. After one blog post—“10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings”—gained steam, she quit her job to write a related book (with 100 tricks) and a follow-up (How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings). But she was struggling to make ends meet as a writer, a stand-up comic, and an actor until her political comedy thrust her into the spotlight in 2020. Her videos were viewed by millions of people around the world, a Netflix special followed, and she’s currently prepping film, TV, and book projects.
A version of this article appeared in the March–April 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.