CAREER FORWARD

In the bestselling tradition of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, The Confidence Code, and How Women Rise, former PepsiCo chief operations officer Grace Puma and former Nike president of consumer-direct Christiana Smith Shi show women how to manage their career journeys, build professional value, get paid what they're worth, and enjoy full lives in and out of work.

In CAREER FORWARD, Puma and Shi draw on decades of experience climbing to the pinnacle of Fortune 500 to show women how to manage their career journeys, build their professional value, get paid what they're worth, steer through the skids that occur in any company, build an authentic career identity, negotiate the forks in the road, and have full lives in and out of work.

Puma and Shi challenge negative tropes about women and ambition, urging readers to be bold, follow their aspirations, and seize the chance to lead "big" lives. They argue that many women don't understand how to maximize career planning. They might occasionally update their resumes, or sporadically network when they're dissatisfied with their jobs, or chase better titles or salary bumps, but with only vague understanding of where it will all lead.

"Career forward" means having such a strong focus on the future that you're always bending in that direction. It means having a beacon you're constantly pointing toward, recognizing that your job is not your career, that being good at your job is often not enough - rather, that you should be stoking the fires of your career at every opportunity, boosting your connections, raising your hand for "difficult" assignments, and working actively to broaden your skill repertoire.

Career Forward offers a robust response to women - especially young women - who ask whether working hard is really worth it. Puma and Shi's emphatic answer is "yes," because if you correctly follow the book's map, it won't feel hard and the rewards will far outweigh the sacrifice.

Grace Puma is the former executive vice president and COO of PepsiCo, and before that held senior positions with United Airlines, Kraft Foods, Motorola, and Gillette. A board member of both Organon & Co and Target, she has been ranked on the "Most Powerful Latina" list by Fortune magazine and also recognized as the "Executive of the Year" by Latina Style magazine. Puma holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Economics from Illinois Benedictine University. She lives in Tampa, Florida.

Christiana Smith Shi is the former president of Nike's consumer-direct division where she led the company's global retail and ecommerce business, and before that she was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. Recently, she founded Lovejoy Advisors, which is focused on digitally transforming consumer and retail businesses. Shi is a graduate of Stanford University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar. She lives in Portland, Oregon.