I CAN, I WILL & I DID

A CEO and board advisor tells a story of transcending societal limits.

Bari, a consultant who’s worked for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry for 30 years, offers an inspiring story of a woman who became very successful in her chosen field. In this narrative of her climb to success, she focuses on how she overcame the ill effects of growing up with a mother whose “unyielding cultural and religious beliefs about how I should act as a girl and a woman…resulted in more than one assault on me when I was a girl by ‘pious’ men,” and what she characterizes as the limiting expectations of her Pakistani immigrant community; her quiet rebellions included sabotaging a potential marriage arranged by her family. Throughout this remembrance, Bari focuses sharply on the racism and sexism she faced over the course of her early life and later career, and she effectively demonstrates how she learned to negotiate obstacles during her climb to success. Bari’s book also features a love story, complicated by later tragedy. Overall, her story of her grit and determination to achieve her goals is genuinely inspiring. However, its inspirational focus can sometimes obscure some of the nuances of her journey; at the same time, the work provides additional texture when Bari acknowledges her ambivalence about immigrant assimilation, and when she tells of how her European American husband nominally converted to Islam as part of their matrimonial process. Also, although she periodically emphasizes the importance of her support system and the chosen family that helped her through some difficult times in her life, she doesn’t say much about feelings regarding her alienation from her own family and childhood community. Still, Bari’s book offers a frequently stirring read.

An often moving story of success, loss, and reassessing priorities.