Review: Unapologetically Ambitious by Shellye Archambeau
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Full of empowering wisdom from one of Silicon Valley's first female African American CEOs, this inspiring leadership book offers a blueprint for how to achieve your personal and professional goals. Shellye Archambeau recounts how she overcame the challenges she faced as a young black woman, wife, and mother, managing her personal and professional responsibilities while climbing the ranks at IBM and subsequently in her roles as CEO. Through the busts and booms of Silicon Valley in the early 2000s, this bold and inspiring book details the risks she took and the strategies she engaged to steer her family, her career, and her company MetricStream toward success. Through her journey, Shellye discovered that ambition alone is not enough to achieve success. Here, she shares the practical strategies, tools, and approaches readers can employ right now, including concrete steps to most effectively:
Dismantle impostor syndrome
Capitalize on the power of planning
Take risks
Developing financial literacy
Build your network
Establish your reputation
Take charge of your career
Integrate work, marriage, parenthood, and self-care
Each chapter lays out key takeaways and actions to increase the odds of achieving your personal and professional goals. With relatable personal stories that ground her advice in the real world and a foreword by leading venture capitalist and New York Times bestselling author Ben Horowitz, Unapologetically Ambitious invites readers to move beyond the solely supportive roles others expect them to fill, to learn how to carefully tread the thin line between assertive and aggressive, and to give themselves permission to strive for the top. Make no apologies for the height of your ambitions. Shellye Archambeau will show you how.
Review:
Unapologetically Ambitious is a beautiful compilation of short chapters filled with advice for the working woman. Archambeau eloquently provides practical tips and strategic wisdom to the reader on how to navigate getting the job done. She set her sights on accomplishing her dreams by a certain deadline, and explains very well how she made it happen including acknowledging that she couldn’t have done it without her support network. Shellye was, and still is, always thinking 10 steps ahead of where she is now. In this book, Shellye also addresses the issues she faced in the 1980s and ’90s as an African American working woman and mother. She expressed her insecurities about not being able to afford to take more than a few weeks of maternity leave after the birth of both of her children for fear of getting too far off track. And if it weren’t for her husband’s support and flexibility, and their ability to hire a nanny, she wouldn’t have been able to return to work and meet her accomplishments on her timeline.
There were plenty of passages where I wished I had a pen or sticky note handy to mark the spot. This is a book I know I will keep for myself to re-read and reference often. Writing this review two days after finishing the book and I am still feeling inspired by the advice she bestowed upon her readers. I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking guidance on how to devise and implement a strategic plan for both their career and life, including those who struggle with balancing all of the steps mentioned in the synopsis.
Where to find a copy:
