*NEWSLETTER* MY memoir so far…
This month’s newsletter is a little different. It’s more personal, more reflective and perhaps more vulnerable than some of my recent editions.
As many of you know, I am in the midst of writing my memoir. It’s a project I almost completed in 2015, but when I joined IBM, it didn’t feel like the right time to publish. Now, with the help of professional writer and journalists, I’ve returned to it with renewed energy and conviction. If all goes well, the book will be finished by the end of this year and published in 2026.
Shia, my CMO suggested that instead of waiting, I share some of the stories and reflections as a newsletter a kind of “memoir so far.” And as always, he was right: the writing feels richer when it’s shared, and the conversations that come out of it are part of the story too.
Why a Memoir?
A memoir is not the same as an autobiography. It’s not a complete record of one’s life, but rather a curated set of experiences, memories and lessons - the moments that shape us and might resonate with others.
As the writer Dani Shapiro puts it: “Memoir is not about what happened, but about how what happened made you who you are.”
Some of the most powerful memoirs of recent decades: Tara Westover’s Educated, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are not just stories of individual women, but blueprints for resilience, ambition, and transformation.
In business, there are brilliant examples too; Andrew Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive remains essential reading on leadership, and Howard Schultz’s Pour Your Heart Into It captures the growth of Starbucks.
But the list of global female CEO memoirs is vanishingly short. That, in itself, is reason enough to add mine to the shelves. Representation matters in leadership, in storytelling, and in the historical record.
Writing a Memoir…
I’ve been studying what makes a memoir more than just a collection of events. The National Centre for Writing offers a guide: “Crafting Your Memoir: A Guide to Storytelling, Reflection and Connection”. Though I couldn’t access every detail, its very framing holds lessons I lean into as I write mine.
A memoir is not just what happened, but how we make sense of it. It’s the reflection in the silence between the lines. What that guide emphasises and what I try to practise is:
Storytelling with purpose: every memory included should illuminate something essential about growth, identity, values.
Reflection: pausing to understand not just the action, but the reaction; the ripple effects, the cost, the wonder. It’s in looking back that lessons emerge.
Connection: with ourselves, with others, with readers. When we share our vulnerabilities, our failures, our human moments, people see that they are not alone.
As I write my memoir, I ask: Which moments show who I have become? Which memories connect me to you; to your struggles, your hopes, your leadership?
Who am I?
One question that always comes up when I write a memoir is the simplest one: Who am I? For me, the answer isn't fixed. It's evolved, shifted, been tested-and at times reinvented. But through it all, I've tried to live by one simple rule: be plus one.
Astronaut and commander Chris Hadfield put it best: "Everywhere you go, you have three basic options: be a minus one, and actively cause harm; be a zero and have no impact; or be a plus one, and actively contribute."
That's become my compass. Not to dominate the room or take up more space than needed, but to add value-leave people and places better than I found them.
My own name tells a story of evolving identity.
I was christened Keryn Green.
At 11, a German writer, Karen Arndt, published a book about me, calling me Jane-the English Girl. And at 18, I added Harriet. Each stage a layer, each name a slightly different lens on who I was becoming.
But names alone don't define us. Our true brand-our commitment and our promise-is in how we show up for others. Over time, I've come to realise that mine rests on three foundations:
- Empathy - seeing the world through another's eyes.
- Authenticity - showing up honestly, even when it's uncomfortable.
- Logic - making decisions grounded in clarity and reason.
These aren't just words on a page; they have been my survival kit in leadership, in family, in reinvention.
So why am I writing this book? I'm writing it for my granddaughter, Willow. Not to give her a roadmap-she'll carve her own-but to offer her a record of the course I charted. To show her that life isn't about being perfect or invulnerable; it's about showing up, bouncing back, and always trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
If nothing else, I want her to know this: you can add value in this world by being present, by being resilient, and by being real.
This memoir is, in many ways, a love letter. To Willow. To my family. To the people I've led, worked with, and learned from. It is my attempt to let my authentic voice shine through the noise of other interpretations, judgements, and headlines. To pull back the green curtain, and let her-and perhaps others-see me as I really am.
The Moment I First Realised I Was a Leader
As the eldest sibling in a traumatic family situation, responsibility came early.
The Perretts bus company was based in our little village of Shipton Oliffe. For 14 years I travelled an hour each way to school, despite my primary school being just a mile from our home. Everything I learnt to do, I learnt on that bus: my first kiss, writing essays, managing squabbles as bus prefect.
But the bus was only the prelude. From the end of primary school to the beginning of secondary, I would walk two hills home, reading the cars outside as a kind of omen. If the district nurse was there, or Dr James, or an ambulance, I knew my father was in crisis. My mother had insisted we care for him at home until his death, and my job was to lead my siblings into the house, make us a snack, walk the dogs, feed the animals, and prepare supper all before stepping tentatively into his room.
It wasn’t called leadership. It wasn’t optional. It was simply what had to be done. And it taught me that strength isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a quiet, consistent presence.
“You’re in Charge Now”
When my mother had her first major car crash, some months after my father’s death, I was 14.
My sister (aged 11) and I were summoned to the headmistress’s office and told she was in intensive care at Cheltenham General Hospital. We were terrified. Yet Miss Stone, our headmistress (and a woman who lived up to her name), told us to return to class, catch the bus home as usual, and wait for word from our grandparents.
As we left her office, she said to me: “You’re in charge now. You’re the eldest.”
That moment landed like a thunderclap. Responsibility. Fear. The knowledge that if we lost another parent, I would have to hold us together.
I coped as you do: one foot in front of the other, moving forward, ignoring the steps backwards when they came. Leadership wasn’t about being the strongest or loudest. It was about being steady when everyone else was breaking.
Warm Sherry & My First MD Role
At 29, I was appointed Managing Director of Macro Group. Chris Thomas, Diploma’s chairman, called me to his office in the City and told me the news. Then, with all the ceremony of the time, he produced a glass of cream sherry to toast my promotion. It was 10.30am. I hated sweet drinks. I left exhilarated and physically sick.
I was young, but confident. Macro had lost its founding father, and my job was to brace and buffer the organisation, to reorient it to a new market reality. My priority was to retain its people, rebuild their confidence, and strengthen the team.
It was brutal at times, but it was a formative chapter. It taught me that leadership is not about title. It is about trust.
The Win That Made Me Weep
May 2013. After months of work, Thomas Cook was saved.
We had preserved 25,000 jobs directly (and countless more indirectly), raised nearly £2bn on the share price, and ensured that no lender or investor lost out.
The technical details were complex: a £425m rights issue, new euro-denominated bonds, £691m in new debt facilities but the human reality was simple: livelihoods were safe, for now.
That night, at a small celebration, I cried. Not for the financial feat, but for the people. Leadership is nothing if not human.
The Decision I’m Proudest Of
Love. After 9/11, living in Manhattan, I tried espresso dating. Seven minutes, no connection.
My therapist, wise and calm, told me: “Let go of your childhood loss. Let love in. Be open to future joy, rather than protecting yourself against a potential loss.”
Then Graham walked into my apartment on 14 December 2001. Within seconds, I knew. He needed me not at all, but wanted me wholly.
Choosing him, and choosing the family we built together, was the proudest decision of my life. Leadership taught me resilience. Love taught me surrender.
The Hardest Decision
Later, when Graham and I married, I had to choose: could I sustain a global C-suite role and be an active parent to teenagers? Could I leave Manhattan, Paris, Hong Kong for Oxford? Could I risk being a parent at all, given my doubts about whether I would be any good at it?
I took the risk. I let love in. And it transformed me.
Not every decision was so clean. Being pushed out of Thomas Cook, despite the turnaround, was one of the most painful chapters of my career. Vindication came later in the Parliamentary Select Committee’s comments, in the collapse that followed. But the lesson remains: never work for people you do not trust, respect, and like.
Family, Grandchildren, and the Unexpected Joy of Leadership at Home
One of the greatest surprises of my life has been how much joy I have found in family, especially in becoming a grandmother. In August, I spent four weeks looking after our grandson True - and it was one of the most exhausting, joyful, infuriating, and transformative experiences I've had in a long time.
It struck me that leadership lessons don't only come from boardrooms, global strategy sessions, or corporate turnarounds. They are alive and present in the nursery, at the park, during the fiftieth "why?" of the day.
Here are some of the lessons that will stay with me:
Patience can be stretched. My threshold expanded further than I thought possible.
Creativity is daily survival. From inventing new games to new songs, my "creativity quotient" grew by the hour.
Negotiation works best with clarity. Two choices. Simple, fair, effective.
Respect for parents has multiplied. Especially working parents who balance it all with love and stamina.
Caring for a toddler is physically taxing. No board meeting ever left me this tired.
Toilet training is leadership school. Every CEO should try it: it builds patience, resilience, and humour.
Testosterone is powerful and frustrating. Watching a little boy's emotions swing was a lesson in empathy.
Children are relentless learners. Their curiosity is unstoppable if you stick with them.
Style and individuality emerge early. I'm in awe of my grandson's natural flair.
See them as they are. Strip away ambitions and preconceptions - and simply love them.
Dance and sing more. I haven't done this much since I was 10, and it was liberating.
Answering "why?" 50 times a day requires clarity. Simplicity of thought is its own discipline.
Time is the secret ingredient. Grandparents, with a little more of it, can build a special symbiosis.
Children mirror us. Stress, anxiety, over-direction - they reflect it back immediately.
Boundaries matter. Setting and honouring them is fundamental to growth.
It is a privilege. Caring for a child is to hold the future in your hands - joy, frustration, exhaustion, and possibility.
These weeks taught me that leadership is not just about strategy or execution. It's about presence. It's about patience, listening, adapting, and loving unconditionally. If every leader spent a few weeks in the company of a toddler, I am convinced our organisations - and our world - would be very different places.
Behind the Green Curtain: Blind Spots
Even the most capable leaders have blind spots. Patterns they can’t see in themselves but that others experience every day. Left unchecked, they stall progress, strain relationships, and erode influence.
The hardest part? Spotting them early enough to change course.
For me, two stand out across my career:
1. Thinking I couldn’t do “big business maths.” I told myself I wasn’t a finance person, that the scale of balance sheets and P&Ls in global business was beyond me. For years, that belief sat quietly in the background — a story I’d written about myself. It took pushing myself through the HBS Finance Director programme, and then running large, complex businesses, to realise that not only could I do it, but I could excel at it. That blind spot became a strength. And it taught me this: the limits we set ourselves are sometimes the easiest ones to dismantle.
2. My unconscious bias towards confident young men from privileged backgrounds. This one was harder to see, and harder still to admit. For a long time, I found myself gravitating towards those who spoke with confidence and certainty — often young men who had grown up with privilege. What I sometimes overlooked was whether that confidence was backed with humility, empathy, or awareness of that privilege. When I left IBM and was being interviewed for Silicon Valley startup chair roles, this blind spot surfaced in sharp relief. I was older than most of the founders combined. Their brilliance was clear, but so too was the lack of humility. I recognised the bias in myself, and I decided not to proceed down that lucrative path. It was the right call for me.
We all have these patterns. They don’t vanish overnight. But the act of naming them, owning them, and choosing differently — that’s where growth begins.
Recently I revisited psychologist Martin Dubin’s work in Blindspotting. He maps out six common blind spots leaders face, with real examples of what happens when we ignore them. His central point is simple but powerful: awareness changes everything.
Building Resilience and Managing Stress Better
Two recent big learnings for me are :-
• improving still further my relationship with control
• better understanding root causes and linking learning with action
As a deeply researched resource, this HBR article has proved v helpful, and is worth digesting: https://buff.ly/2FgfCJV
On control - being able to separate out what you can and cannot control is essential. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s easy to assume you can’t change your situation. There are issues that may always be outside of your control. Ask yourself, “How close am I to the root causes or decision-makers in these circumstances? Do I have the skills, information, resources, or relationships that enable me to change or influence this situation?”
For elements that you can’t control - recognise that you do have the ability to choose how to interpret or frame them!
I love this graphic that perfectly illustrates the point, going around in circles or making progress?!
I would love to get your stress buster top tips and how you're strengthening your emotional fitness and resilience.
I am also convinced that if you can see it, you can be it. That’s why role models matter
If You Can See It • You Can Be It
I think my reflection drawn from living and working in 4 continents in 5 different industries is never to underestimate the power of role models
I was reminded some years ago a major telco provider surveyed thousands of young women about what they wanted to be when they grew up. The top 10 “professions” chosen were somewhat surprising - no one mentioned being a doctor, journalist, camerawomen, businesswomen, or writer.
As much as I love Cheryl Cole and wish I could wake up each morning looking as lovely as she does, the top role models mentioned in the survey were footballers WAGs, celebrities, soap opera stars etc.
Perhaps this isn’t surprising as many young women have had limited exposure to the amazing roles and professions that so many women really have - which is why we are entering such exciting times with many more visible role models, including politicians, law makers, and artists.
This was further confirmed with the release of the OUTStanding LGBT+ Role Model Lists; I ams proud to be involved in the judging process for over a decade now.
Are you seeing more relatable role models today? We need to see if to be it, which is all critical to building back better.
Possible Titles
Here are the working titles we’re playing with:
Getting Better Never Stops
The Left Field Candidate
Behind the Green Curtain
Green For Go
The Time is Now. Why Women Should Take Charge
Travel Far Travel Fast
We’ll be running a poll next week with the top four. I’d love your votes.
As I've been writing this book, I've realised again and again that it is not just my story. It's a story shaped by every person, every place, and every moment that has touched my life.
I see this memoir as being for everyone who has touched my life - and that feels exactly right. To all of you who have shared your stories, offered your inputs, and made connections along the way, I am deeply grateful.
This book is not written in isolation; it is born from conversations, experiences, challenges, and triumphs we've shared together. Your voices, insights, and encouragement shine through its pages.
So thank you - truly. I hope, in reading it, you'll see not just my journey, but also the threads of your own.
Warmest Harriet