At the 2024 Kellogg Global Women’s Summit, distinguished speakers shared their insights and journeys, inspiring 650+ attendees to navigate their professional and personal lives with purpose, resilience and clarity. Here, we spotlight the thought-provoking books authored by our keynote speakers, panelists and Kellogg faculty. 

These works delve into themes of leadership, happiness, negotiation and personal growth, offering practical guidance and fresh perspectives. Whether you’re seeking strategies for career advancement, effective negotiation or building a fulfilling life, these books provide essential tools for women striving to make impactful changes in their lives and careers.

From our keynote speakers

“Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier”

By Oprah Winfrey and Arthur C. Brooks

In “Build the Life You Want,” Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

With insight, compassion and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life ― immediately. They recommend practical, research-based practices to build the four pillars of happiness: family, friendship, work and faith. And along the way, they share hard-earned wisdom from their own lives and careers as well as the witness of regular people whose lives are joyful despite setbacks and hardship.

Equipped with the tools of emotional self-management and ready to build your four pillars, you can take control of your present and future rather than hoping and waiting for your circumstances to improve. “Build the Life You Want” is your blueprint for a better life. Available on Amazon and from Penguin Random House.

“My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future”

By Indra Nooyi

For a dozen years as one of the world’s most admired CEOs, Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. The first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company — and one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time — she transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence and a deep sense of purpose. Now, in a rich memoir brimming with grace, grit, and good humor, “My Life in Full” offers a firsthand view of Nooyi’s legendary career and the sacrifices it so often demanded.

Nooyi takes us through the events that shaped her, from her childhood and early education in 1960s India, to the Yale School of Management, to her rise as a corporate consultant and strategist who soon ascended into the most senior executive ranks. The book offers an inside look at PepsiCo, and Nooyi’s thinking as she steered the iconic American company toward healthier products and reinvented its environmental profile, despite resistance at every turn.

For the first time and in raw detail, Nooyi also lays bare the difficulties that came with managing her demanding job with a growing family, and what she learned along the way. She makes a clear, actionable, urgent call for business and government to prioritize the care ecosystem, paid leave and work flexibility, and a convincing argument for how improving company and community support for young family builders will unleash the economy’s full potential.

Generous, authoritative and grounded in lived experience, “My Life in Full” is the story of an extraordinary leader’s life, a moving tribute to the relationships that created it, and a blueprint for 21st-century prosperity. Available on Amazon and from Penguin Random House.

From Our Esteemed Panelists

“Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership”

By Janet Foutty, Susan McKenty Brady and Lynn Perry Wooten

Women who arrive at the top should be able to thrive at the top. Instead, they’re judged lucky to survive ― even more so with pandemic-era pressures overwhelming their already busy family and professional lives.

What if there was a way you could flourish in a senior leadership role as your best self, inspire excellence in your team channeling your own well-being and, at the same time, lead a highly fulfilled life? There is ― and “Arrive and Thrive” shows you how.

This timely and practice-driven guide reveals 7 practices you can use to thrive as you rise to positions of greater responsibility, risk, and reward ― and empower others along the way. Powered by the latest research, boots-on-the-ground experience, and advice from 24 of the world’s most successful leaders, the book captures seven practices that help you understand and leverage your unique personal powers so you can thrive in leadership.

Three of today’s top women leaders in business and academia, the authors hail from very different worlds ― each brings a different career path, focus of experience and personal point of view to the conversation. From their experiences, you’ll learn to make the best choices for yourself, your team, your industry, and your community. Available on Amazon and from the authors’ website.

“Gather As You Go: Sharing Lessons Learned Along the Way”

By Carol Lavin Bernick

Thought leader Carol Lavin Bernick, drawing from her extensive life and work experiences, shares 300+ highly engaging, inspirational stories in her memoir, “Gather As You Go.” Through her insights, thoughts and wisdom, she provides people of all ages with practical advice to enjoy a more resilient, positive and productive life. Rather than writing several books, Bernick chose to create one self-help book imparting easily digestible short stories of her experiences for people with busy lives.

“Gather As You Go” is part business book, sharing stories from her 37 years at the Alberto Culver Company and encompassing new product development, branding, the company’s cultural overhaul she led and the challenges in a family-owned business. It’s also part family focused, with advice on raising great kids as a working mom, losing loved ones — one to drugs and one to cancer — and the challenges of and solutions to helping elderly parents. It’s also part coffee table and lifestyle book, providing tips on designing, building and decorating homes; entertaining, throwing great parties and weddings; and creating meaningful and major charitable efforts to make communities stronger through philanthropy.

“Gather As You Go” covers a lot of ground. Organized into 10 chapters that take the form of quick, informative and empowering life lessons and reflections, each chapter features introductory thoughts from well-respected people speaking to their own expertise. With its beautiful photographs and artful illustrations, this substantive, 455-page book is a must-have. From Millennial to Baby Boomer, readers will find Bernick’s teachings to be authentic, tried and true, sincere and down to earth. Available on Amazon or on the author’s website.

From Our Kellogg Faculty

“The Mirrored Door: Break Through the Hidden Barrier that Locks Successful Women in Place”

By Ellen Taaffe, Director of Women’s Leadership Programs at Kellogg

At some point in their careers, many women encounter the mirrored door ― the place where, when presented with opportunities, we reflect inward and hesitate and deem we’re not ready or worthy enough to move forward, whether that is to raise our hands or go for the next role.

But there is a way to break through and overcome the gendered expectations that girls and women internalize over our lifetimes that create a hidden barrier that keeps us from reaching our full potential.

Drawing on research, stories from her own career and those of her students and the mid-late career women she has coached, Professor Ellen Taaffe explains why the five perils of success ― being prepared to perfection, eager to please, trying to fit the mold, pushing too hard and patiently performing and expecting rewards to follow ― get us to a certain level, and then may prevent our taking the next step in our careers as expectations rise. She offers a new, empowering framework for navigating the challenges of the workplace with more awareness and expertise. Available on Amazon and on the author’s website.

“Unraveling Dualities: Finding peace with paradox”

By Gail Berger, Deputy Director of the Kellogg Center for Executive Women

Dualities, what seem to be contradictions, are everywhere. In business and in life, leaders walk the tightrope of risk versus reward every single day.

“Unraveling Dualities” encourages you to embrace paradoxical fluidity on your own personal journey. The chapters in this book do not rely on a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership skills and behaviors but, rather, provide a framework and exercises for navigating and personalizing your thought process and actions. The most successful people are versatile — they pivot, listen and adapt their approach appropriately in any given situation.

Learn how to make choices that enable you to behave and deliver outcomes aligned with your values and become a better leader and a better human. Available on Amazon.

“Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes”

By Victoria Medvec, Executive Director of the Kellogg Center for Executive Women

With “Negotiate Without Fear,” master negotiator, Kellogg professor, and accomplished CEO Victoria Medvec delivers an authoritative and practical resource for eliminating the fear that impedes success in negotiation. In this book, readers will discover unique and proprietary negotiation strategies honed over decades advising Fortune 500 clients on high-stakes, complex negotiations.

“Negotiate Without Fear” provides readers at all levels of negotiation skills the ability to increase their negotiating confidence and maximize their negotiation success. You'll learn how to:

• Put the right issues on the table by defining your objectives for the negotiation
• Analyze the issues being negotiated with an Issue Matrix to ensure you have the right issues to secure what you want
• Establish ambitious goals using a proprietary tool to identify the weaknesses in the other side's best outside alternative (BATNA)
• Leverage a unique architecture for creating and delivering Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers (MESOs)

Negotiate Without Fear belongs on the bookshelves of executives and all the dealmakers who work for them. Available on Amazon and from Wiley.

“Negotiating the Sweet Spot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table”

By Leigh Thompson, J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations

On average, people leave about 20% of potential mutual gains untapped in any negotiation. This is akin to taking 20% of the value in any deal and dumping it into a garbage canister. Finding that hidden 20%, the “sweet spot,” is a skill that takes practice but is also one that anybody can learn.

Leigh Thompson offers best practices and tools within this book to use in daily negotiations and conflict situations. She calls these strategies “hacks” because they work but don’t require a lot of investment, training, expense and time. You don’t have to be a CEO, senior VP or regional brand manager to learn how to find the sweet spot in life’s negotiations.

In “Negotiating the Sweet Spot,” benefits include learning the following:

• Understanding where the sweet spot is in the deals you negotiate
• Adopting a big-picture mindset when approaching any negotiation
• Seeing negotiations less as win-lose battles and more as opportunities to use problem-solving skills
• Utilizing a tool kit of “hacks” that will work in any negotiation and have been proven effective by a top expert in the field

“Negotiating the Sweet Spot” walks people of all skill and experience levels through simple and proven techniques that are sure to result in better outcomes for all parties and uncover the hidden value that exists in any negotiation. Available on Amazon and from HarperCollins.