Before I Was Ceo: Life Stories And Lessons From Leaders Before They Reached The Top

Before I Was CEO will feature a collection of real-life stories from some of the world’s most renowned business leaders. It describes, in the business leader’s own words, the watershed moments that helped them get to the top, and includes a section of “lessons learned” for Millennials who aspire to lead tomorrow. At 27, business journalist Peter Vanham got accredited to Davos—the yearly meeting place of the most powerful leaders in the world—and got to meet one-on-one with many of the world’s business leaders. But instead of asking them about their latest quarterly results, or their profits and losses, he used his time with them to talk about their lives. The leaders told Vanham how they started out, why they chose the career paths they did, and how they dealt with their “watershed moments” along the way. Their stories form the basis of this book, which is filled with personal accounts from some of the most hard-to-reach and enigmatic CEOs and leaders in the world. As such, Before I was CEO, will be a book for the millions of young people around the world who are working their way up a corporate ladder in their twenties and early thirties, and pondering what to do next—just like the featured CEOs once were.

PETER VANHAM is a business writer and media strategist. He is the U.S. media lead and a global leadership fellow at the World Economic Forum, as well as a contributor to Financial Times, Business Insider, and Forbes. Prior to working in media, he was a management consultant at Bain & Company in Brussels. He holds an M.A. in Business & Economics from Columbia Journalism School and an M.S. in Commercial Engineering from the University of Leuven.