28-year-old former teacher now earns $110,000

Salary transparency laws are sweeping the US and employees are more open than ever about how much money they make. Have you ever negotiated a job offer, gotten a big raise, or used salary transparency to move up in your career?

When Acacia Fante was laid off from her marketing job in July as part of a company restructuring, she was blindsided like so many other US employees over the summer. On top of that, Fante, 28, was in the midst of moving with her husband from Denver to Tulsa, Oklahoma, so he could start a medical residency program. Despite the abrupt departure, Fante's former employer gave her an important trump card that strengthened her new job search: The edtech company operated with complete salary transparency. Every job posting included a salary range, and within the company, you could see the pay progression for different levels of promotion within your job family, Fante says. Fante added that this policy existed before Colorado enacted its salary transparency law in January 2021. "It revolutionized the way I think about pay, because that transparency felt so natural and something that everyone deserved," she says. It became a must-have for everyone she met with and strengthened her negotiations: "Once I had a taste of it - knowing how much I was going to get paid for this position, knowing how much I could get paid if I moved elsewhere - it seemed silly to me to fight an employer who didn't work the same way," she says. "It gave me confidence to feel like I could have those conversations, knowing that I was worthy of a certain level of pay and that I could negotiate." Today, Fante feels good about the money he makes and hopes to break the $200,000 mark over the course of her career. But her salary success comes with a dose of "serious impostor syndrome" as a former educator who went from $33,000 to $43,000 a year in four years before changing careers in 2020. "Educators are notoriously underpaid, and I've more than doubled my salary in the last two years," Fante says. She feels proud of the feat and "of my choice to commit to finding something where I felt valued," but admits it's tough to swallow thinking about others "who are working just as hard as you in different roles and being valued at such a lower degree monetarily. And so, for me, I keep trying to say it's not that I don't deserve it — it's that other people deserve to be paid equitably, as well." Follow Global Economic Developments on Social Media! Click here to follow Ieconomy official Facebook account! Click here to follow Ieconomy official Instagram account! Click here to follow Ieconomy official Twitter account!