A wise, practical, and compassionate guide to startup success from a determined woman.
An Indian American entrepreneur describes how her harrowing medical history spurred a lifelong obsession with advancing the field of women’s health.
When Sarna was 13, she went to the emergency room with an agonizingly painful ovarian cyst—a diagnosis she would receive 24 hours after a doctor recommended that she should go home and take some Tylenol. Although her cysts disappeared after puberty, her determination to improve care for uterine-related conditions lasted a lifetime. Sarna has based nearly every decision in her adult life—applying to Berkeley’s biology program; taking an entry-level engineering position at a medical device company; starting her own organization after being laid off—on her desire to make women’s health care better. As she demonstrates in her lively text, she pursued this goal through years of being underestimated, taken for granted, and ignored. Eventually, Sarna formed a research-and-development team whose closeness led them to call themselves “La Familia.” That team developed a diagnostic medical device that Boston Scientific eventually acquired for $275 million. The author is now a partner at the innovative venture capital firm Y Combinator. Throughout this frank, vulnerable, and fast-paced memoir, Sarna returns to the central theme of the consequences of being “underrated and doubted.” She realized that “the single most important decision I made in my career was to push forward even while being doubted by so many. Doubted by the famous inventor who fell asleep while I was speaking to him….Doubted by the guy who came to my booth during a trade show, looked over my shoulder, and asked to speak with the CEO of the company.” Perhaps as a result of the ways in which she was underestimated, Sarna’s approach to entrepreneurship, which she articulates through warm and humorous advice embedded in her life story, is profoundly empathetic, both for her co-workers and community and for herself.
A wise, practical, and compassionate guide to startup success from a determined woman.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781982147907
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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