What job does Peggy Olson start with at Sterling Cooper?

Peggy Olson starts her job at Sterling Cooper as a secretary.

When Elisabeth Moss’s character first arrives at the agency, she is introduced as the new secretary assigned to Don Draper. Peggy begins in the office’s secretarial world, where Joan Holloway manages the secretarial pool and helps orient her to the workplace.

Peggy’s initial position is important because her career becomes one of the show’s central arcs. Don recognizes her writing ability, and she eventually moves from secretarial work into the creative department as a copywriter. That advancement was unusual within the show’s early-1960s workplace culture, where women were often confined to support roles.

The main mix-up is calling Peggy a receptionist or identifying her later profession. She is not initially an account executive or copywriter; those labels describe neither her starting job nor the early role that establishes her path at Sterling Cooper.