Day: December 3, 2025

• I asked six executives in November to share the books that shaped their leadership approach.
• The list features a range of leaders from tech companies, like AWS, to style brands like Revlon.
• The books they pick center on decision-making and leading with emotional intelligence.

It’s that time of year again, and if you’re searching for the perfect book to gift a family member, spouse, or even your boss, you’re in luck.

Last month, I asked six executives from Big Tech companies like AWS, to financial firms like Mastercard, and style brands like Revlon and Mejuri, about the books that have influenced their leadership style.

Their responses included management staples, like “Extreme Ownership: How US Navy Seals Lead,” and books focused on soft skills, such as “Emotional Intelligence” or “Quiet.”

Read on for the full list:

Sarah Cooper, Amazon Web Services director of AI Native

AWS executive Sarah Cooper said she’s rereading Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” She said the book is filled with guiding principles for capitalizing on disruptive innovation, which are lessons that resonate in today’s workforce.

She’s also a fan of Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence,” which explores why IQ alone doesn’t guarantee success and why emotional awareness matters. Cooper said that leading with empathy is especially critical as AI reshapes the workforce.

“I truly believe that the way we work could change dramatically,” Cooper said.

Jennifer Van Buskirk, AT&T head of business operations

AT&T’s head of business operations, Jennifer Van Buskirk, told Business Insider that she’s “a bit of an adrenaline junkie,” and looks for signs of risk-taking when interviewing candidates. Her book picks reflect that intensity.

The executive said “Extreme Ownership: How US Navy Seals Lead” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin teaches people to take ownership and see things through.

The second book she named, “Get Sh*t Done,” by Lauris Liberts and motivational brand Startup Vitamins, was handed to her by the CIO of her former startup. She said it’s filled with great quotes that reflect her style of thinking.

Raj Seshadri, Mastercard chief commercial payments officer

Mastercard’s Raj Seshadri highlighted the book “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown. Seshadri said that the book focuses on courage and vulnerability in leadership and argues that great leaders are defined by their ability to build trust and lead with empathy, rather than their titles.

“It provides practical tools for creating brave cultures where people feel safe to take risks and innovate,” Seshadri said.

Michelle Peluso, Revlon CEO

Revlon CEO Michelle Peluso said she gravitates more toward biographies over traditional business books because “they offer a more human-centered perspective.” A few of her favorites include:

• “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• “Personal History” by Katharine Graham
• “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson
• “Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela

Christina Shim, IBM chief sustainability officer

IBM’s chief sustainability officer said the company has rallied around the book, “The Geek Way” by Andrew McAfee. She said that IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is working to build a culture inspired by the book, which focuses on four core pillars, including science, ownership, speed, and openness.

Shim said another book that has shaped her own leadership style is Susan Cain’s “Quiet.” The book explores how to navigate being an introvert in an extroverted world — and she thought it was so important that she bought copies for her entire team. She said that introverts often make up half a team, and understanding how to work effectively together is essential.

Noura Sakkijha, Mejuri CEO

The CEO of jewelry brand Mejuri told Business Insider that many books have influenced her leadership style, but one that stuck with her was Ben Horowitz’s “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.”

Sakkijha said it helped her understand that building a business is rarely a linear process. She said that sometimes reading other founders’ stories made the process look easy. In contrast, Horowitz, who cofounded Andreessen Horowitz, offers practical advice for navigating the most challenging aspects of starting a business, based on his own experience.

“It was really helpful to read his story, how they built the business, the challenges they went through, and the persistence,” Sakkijha said.

• Cher Scarlett resigned from Apple after helping to start the employee activist movement, #AppleToo.
• She struggled to find a tech job and later ended up homeless, living out of shelters.
• She now attends community college, sees a bright future, and has no regrets about leaving Apple.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cher Scarlett, a 40-year-old former programmer and current community college student based in Southern California. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

Growing up in a chaotic household, I never had much of a choice but to figure things out on my own. At age 6, I learned how to bake bread when my family needed dinner, and in middle school, I used that same initiative to teach myself how to code.

My home life worsened, and I dropped out of high school and went down a dark path. When I got pregnant at 19, I knew I wanted a better life for my daughter. I earned my GED with a near-perfect math score and broke into tech as a front-end engineer without a college degree. My tech jobs became my identity and source of self-worth.

Twenty years after starting my tech career, I quit my job at Apple. What followed was one of the hardest times of my life, but it was what I needed to finally see my true value.

My engineering career was fun at times, but unfulfilling

I worked for companies such as Blizzard, Starbucks, and USA Today as a software engineer. I had the opportunity to work on some really interesting projects, but I felt unfulfilled. I was always the activist type at work, speaking out against injustice, and I kept looking for a company that I felt like was making a positive impact on its community and employees.

When I was hired as a principal software engineer at Apple in April of 2020, I thought it was what I’d been looking for: Apple invested in education, installed computers in elementary schools, and even advocated for human and environmental rights. It seemed to embody the counterculture and activist movements that had been ingrained in my identity as someone who grew up in the Seattle area in the 1990s.

I started the #Appletoo movement and had no idea it would impact my career

About a year after I started working at Apple, coworkers and I created the #AppleToo movement, where we gathered testimonials from employees who shared their allegations of harassment, discrimination, abuse, and more.

I later helped send an official open letter to Apple asking for specific changes in how the company handled labor-related issues and complaints.

Two months later, I resigned. I didn’t view what I did as something that could ruin my career or put myself in a position where I couldn’t provide for my daughter. I was still taught when you see something, say something — so that’s what I did.

After I quit Apple, I couldn’t find another tech job

I had mixed feelings about my departure. I felt grief and disbelief at how it was ending, but I was self-assured and excited to reshape my vision of how I could impact the world with the software I worked on. I wasn’t fearless, but I had a lot of belief that I’d find another programming job because it had never been an issue in the past.

I applied to places that seemed to align with my values, but I wasn’t hired. Some hiring managers told me it was because I was underqualified without a college degree.

In August 2023, a year and a half after I left Apple, I ran out of money to pay my bills and enrolled in a community college to pursue a degree in computer science. Not only was it out of desperation because I needed a job to take care of my daughter and myself, but also because without that part of my identity, I felt like nothing.

I experienced homelessness before enrolling in community college

The same month I enrolled, I left an abusive situation in my personal life. I had to send my daughter to live with someone else, and I lived out of my car. I ended up withdrawing from my classes.

I spent some time in shelters before getting referred to an intensive, 10-week domestic violence program. I went to classes daily and counseling sessions multiple times a week to talk about why, my whole life, I kept going towards abusive situations. I realized that I put all of my self-worth into my identity as a software engineer and neglected the rest of myself.

I left the program feeling like a completely different person and re-enrolled in community college, but this time it was for something I’ve always been passionate about — astrophysics and earth sciences.

I’m on track to graduate with highest honors this spring, and I just applied to transfer programs. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my degree yet, but I know that it’s something that’ll make me happy.

I don’t have any regrets about leaving Apple

If I could go back and change anything about the time I left Apple, it would be that I reached out for help with the domestic violence I was facing, instead of suffering in secret.

I’m redefining what success means to me, and it has nothing to do with money or prestige. I’ve landed an internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a research assistant position at Caltech. It’s interesting because the thing that has gotten me noticed at these places is my programming experience. I’m finally in a place where that’s no longer my whole identity, but it’s a part of myself that I’m getting to reclaim.

College has done for me something that no other part of my life has given me. I feel rewarded for my hard work. Getting that positive attention means everything to the bright little girl who never got any and has helped me learn to truly value my whole self.

If you quit your job for an unconventional path and want to share your story, please reach out to this reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.