Author Event! Suzy Welch & Karissa Bodnar of Thrive Cosmetics

About the book:

An inspiring, wise and highly practical method for discovering your true self and identifying the fulfilling career meant just for you.

No matter where we are in our lives, be it atop the heights of achievement or just setting out on our journey, we’ve all had that moment where we’ve wondered, What is my purpose? What was I born to do? The answer can feel just within our grasp or as far off as the horizon. Either way, how in the world do we get there?

Enter Becoming You, a joyful, deeply researched, and immediately applicable step-by-step guidebook to help you answer that very question. Original, research-driven, and transformative, Becoming You is based on the widely acclaimed class at NYU Stern School of Business taught by Professor Suzy Welch, a three-time New York Times-bestselling author, Top 5 career podcast host, CEO advisor, and tech innovator.

Becoming You opens with a shot across the bow of what Professor Welch calls the “happiness industrial complex” and its platitudes about joy and optimism. Happiness, she argues, isn’t a goal to chase at all—it’s an outcome. And not an outcome of manifesting or mindset-molding, but of doing the deep, often difficult inner work of building a meaningful, productive, and connected life.

Here Professor Welch lays out a practical and accessible 13-part methodology designed to help readers do just that. Developed over years of research, data analysis, and extensive testing, the Becoming You method teaches you who you are when you’re standing still, so that when you get moving, you know exactly which way to go. It’s about building the bridge between the life you’re living and the life you want, can, and should be living. In the lexicon of Becoming You, it is about finding your “Area of Transcendence,” which is made possible when:

• You live according to your deepest, most authentic value
• You’re aligned with your strongest and most unique aptitudes
• Your work is economically viable, and calls to you emotionally, economically, or both

Funny, warm, deeply personal, sometimes tough, and always refreshingly honest, Becoming You is packed with gritty real-life stories, thought-provoking exercises, and heart-opening activities. It’s a book with the proven power to change lives—turning fear and uncertainty about the future into confidence and a clear path forward.

About the authors:

Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, tech entrepreneur,and three-time New York Times best-selling author, Suzy Welch is known for imparting warmth and wisdom about business and culture, captivating an enthusiastic and expanding audience.

Over the course of her multifaceted 40-year career, Professor Welch has been acrime reporter in Miami, a consultant at Bain & Co., and a columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, she has been (and remains) a contributor to the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. But Professor Welch’s greatest passion is in the classroom at NYU Stern School of Business, where she teaches two acclaimed classes, “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need,” and “Managing with Purpose.” Professor Welch is also the director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing, a community of management scholars and practitioners committed to advancing the discovery of authentic meaning.

Professor Welch was born in Portland, Oregon in 1959. She began her career as a crime reporter for The Miami Herald in 1981, after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University. After a serendipitous reassignment to the business beat some years later, she left daily journalism to attend Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar. The next seven years were spent at Bain & Company, as a consultant working with manufacturing clients in the Midwest.

In 1995, Professor Welch combined her two career paths at the Harvard Business Review. In her years at HBR, eventually as the publication’s Editor, she conceptualized and edited articles on strategy, operations, and organizational behavior, and wrote others on leadership, change, and crisis management. With her late husband, Jack Welch, Professor Welch is the author of two international bestsellers, Winning, in 2005, and The Real-Life MBA, in 2015. On her own, she is the author of the 2008-2009 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea, a decision-making concept she originally wrote about as a columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. Professor Welch’s newest book, Becoming You: The Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career, will be published in May 2025.

After her husband’s passing in 2020, Professor Welch joined the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business as a clinical professor of management practice. One of her classes, “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need” is an interactive self-discovery methodology that helps students discover and live into their authentic purpose. She also teaches “Managing with Purpose,” a survey of the many skills and competencies leaders must hone to be beloved by their teams, customers, and communities. Also at Stern, Professor Welch’s research into values formation and discovery eventually led to the creation of a suite of psychometric tools, designed to help individuals discover the gap between their lived experience and the full expression of their values.

Professor Welch serves on the board of the publicly traded home services giant, ANGI, and Humane World for Animals. She is an active supporter of the Good Food Institute, an alternative proteins think tank, and The Central Park Conservancy. She has a large family, including the most perfect grandchildren in the history of humanity, and lots of dogs. She lives in New York.

Karissa Bodnar is the Founder & CEO of Thrive Causemetics® and Bigger Than Beauty Skincare®, a pioneering direct-to-consumer beauty company rooted in mission and innovation. Recognized as a leading voice in beauty, DTC, and philanthropy, Karissa has built Thrive Causemetics® into the largest beauty brand that gives back.

With over a decade of experience as a makeup artist, beauty product developer, and formulator, Karissa began her career at Sephora before moving into product development at Clarisonic and L’Oréal Luxe. At 24, she founded Thrive Causemetics® in memory of her best friend Kristy, who passed away from cancer. Motivated by Kristy’s struggle to find safe beauty products during treatment, Karissa began formulating in her kitchen with a mission to create high-performance, vegan, cruelty-free products designed to be safe for all, including the immunocompromised.

Since launching in 2015, Thrive Causemetics® has gone viral for its best-selling tubing mascara (sold every 11 seconds) and bold social impact. For every product purchased, the brand gives back to help communities thrive, donating over $150 million in products and funds to 600+ nonprofit partners worldwide.

Karissa has been featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Forbes’ America’s Self-Made Women, Marie Claire’s Most Powerful Women, and Inc.’s Badass Female Founders list.

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