Good morning, Broadsheet readers! California calls it quits with Walgreens over its abortion pill stance, Yum China Holdings seizes on China’s post-COVID boom, and former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty shares her personal side in her new book Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, which is out today. Have a great Tuesday!
– The personal side. In her new book Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, Ginni Rometty describes arriving at IBM as an entry-level systems engineer in 1981. The company had a “buttoned-up culture,” well-known enough that Rometty purchased a navy-blue pinstripe suit before her first day.
Forty-two years and one CEO job later, Rometty is on the other side of that formal culture. In her new book, published today, she shares personal stories that shaped her professional life.
“I knew that if I didn’t do it, it would not help people,” Rometty told me of her decision to share her personal life.
Rometty tells readers how her father left their family when she was 16. Her mother was forced to support four kids outside of Chicago without a college degree or any work experience. Rometty took on the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings—which she says is one reason she never had children of her own. Watching her mother go back to school as an adult inspired Rometty’s support for continuing education programs and hiring employees from nontraditional career paths.
She shares her experience with her weight; colleagues in the 1980s told her to lose weight, saying that her physical appearance was holding back her career. While Rometty acknowledges such a comment would be inappropriate in today’s corporate environment, she says the advice was “well-meaning.”
She reflects on her mixed feelings about being the “first female” CEO of IBM, a job she held between 2012 and 2020. She tried to avoid the label for a long time but ultimately came to the same conclusion she did about IBM’s struggles to evolve from a legacy business to a modern tech company. “If I didn’t define who the company was, other people would define it for me,” she remembers; the same applied to her own experience.
Rometty opens the book with the story of her father leaving her family. The formative experience influenced nearly everything that followed, including the CEO’s determination to succeed and rise to the top of corporate America. As she navigated challenges as IBM’s CEO, traveling constantly, overseeing complex transactions, and attempting to turn around a struggling business, her family’s experience grounded her. “That, to me, set the bar for what bad was. No matter how bad other things got, I’d say it’s not that bad—I can keep working through this.”
She hopes that people come away from her book with a new understanding of how to do hard things—with a positive impact. “You have to reveal things,” she says, “for people to learn.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- 'We're done.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state is "done" doing business with Walgreens after the pharmacy chain, led by CEO Roz Brewer, said it would halt distribution of the abortion pill mifepristone in 20 states following legal threats from Republican attorneys general. Newsom has ordered the state health department to review all relationships with the company. Bloomberg
- Going local. Yum China Holdings, the owner of KFC and Pizza Hut chains in mainland China, is making moves to offer value-driven meals and local cuisine. CEO Joey Wat said that she's aware that consumers, even those residing in top-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, are looking for ways to cut meal costs to meet rising housing prices. South China Morning Post
- Legally required. In the latest move for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's feminist agenda, publicly-traded companies in Spain will be required to have boards consisting of 40% women by July 2024, with similar parity reflected in the company's management. Private companies with 250 or more employees will have until July 2026 to make the change. Last year, the European Union directed all nations in the region to implement similar laws by 2026. Bloomberg
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Slowing progress. The contracting Australian economy is slowing women's financial progress. The Financy Women's Index, which tracks women's financial progress in Australia, dropped for the first time in a decade. Experts say that the COVID relief funds, combined with other social policies, helped men more than women, and the rising interest rates today are driving down female employment. Bloomberg
- Women's Month investing. Three biotech and health care companies with women founders raised some of last week's biggest venture capital rounds. Cargo Therapeutics, Chroma Medicine, and Kindbody all closed nine-figure rounds in a rare week in which A.I. Did not dominate the list of biggest rounds. Crunchbase
- Lab is best? With the baby formula shortage creating an opening in the market, startup Biomilq aims to create artificial breast milk that provides some of the nutritional benefits of breast milk for those who are unable to naturally breastfeed. The New Yorker
ON MY RADAR
Women in tech are forever cast as ‘adults’ but rarely as CEO Bloomberg
Drew Barrymore is too much—and that’s just right Los Angeles Times
Margaret Atwood on loss and storytelling Vanity Fair
Republicans could flip a number of Senate seats in 2024. Will women candidates benefit? The 19th
PARTING WORDS
“Fame doesn’t leave you. The jobs leave you. Fame stays with you the whole time.”
—Jamie Lee Curtis, who was nominated for her first Academy Award for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once
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