Across the globe, an increasing percentage of people work for large companies. In the UK alone, nearly half of the workers are employed by firms with 250 people or more. In the US, as of the 2014 Census data, nearly 40 per cent of workers were employed at either large companies (those with 2500 people or more),¹ or very large ones (with 10 000 people or more).² Close to another third of workers in the US were at mid‐sized companies (with 100 to 2500 employees).

As corporations and businesses continue to grow, so will opportunities within them. What you need to succeed are the six mindshifts laid out as chapters in this book. The mindshifts are outlined, then brought to life with relatable examples of people I've met along the way. All of these people are real, though some names, and occasionally some genders, have been changed — as they used to say on TV — ‘to protect the innocent’. Ways to put the mindshifts into practice are listed at the end of each chapter so you can adopt the ones that work for you.

       ***

      If my life had worked out differently, I might have been a forester — planting trees, assessing timber plots — and writing about it all in a rough‐hewn log cabin surrounded by towering redwoods, with the occasional bear ambling by.

      This wasn't actually a dream of mine as a child; growing up in the US, I had no specific vision of what my career would be. I worked odd jobs to earn and save money in high school, and one of these jobs involved taking aptitude and personality tests at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education. One test indicated that I'd be well‐suited to a life in forestry or the clergy.

      Neither option, I confess, interested me remotely.

      I wasn't really exposed to people working within large corporations, and I never particularly thought about corporate life either. I've now spent the past 40 years working for, and leading, businesses at some of the world's most interesting, innovative companies — including more than a decade heading the Asia Pacific (APAC) region for parts of Google, as well as for Twitter and Cloudflare. Before that, I served as the first female partner in Asia at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Over the years, I also had roles in the financial services sector, including at Visa, American Express and Charles Schwab.

      I went to Brown University, where you didn't have to declare a major until your junior year, which was one reason I chose the school. After graduating with a degree in applied math and economics, I took a job in banking because it ticked two boxes on my wish list: a great training program, and the opportunity to move to New York City, which seemed like an exciting place to live.

While much of my career has been in sales and general management, these were not early interests. As a teen, I subscribed to Seventeen magazine (typical) and Psychology Today (oddball choice), thinking that maybe I'd become a psychologist. I had exactly one early experience in sales, creating an ad book with three friends in high school to fund our senior year activities. I had to go to dozens of merchants I didn't know and ask for money to advertise to the students and parents. It was my idea and I persisted with it. Looking back now, that is the real through‐line in my career — perseverance. Once I decide on something, I'm full steam ahead, driven to make it happen. Recently, my mom said that even in high school I was always tired because I was trying to cram in one more thing.

      It's easy to feel like you should know exactly what you want to do in your career in order to be successful and happy, to have a specific vision and then execute it. But that hasn't been my path, or that of many of the people in this book. The fact is, you don't have to know what you want to do to rise and thrive, and even if you do know now, you may change your mind later. Today's rapid pace of change means that many of the most exciting fields and companies of the future probably don't exist now. Even if you love what you're doing, something else might arise that intrigues you (as the Internet did for me in my forties). Even though I didn't have a specific plan in mind (other than travel; I knew I wanted