When I first opened The Unexpected CEO, I thought I’d be reading another standard success story, but it turned out to be much more. Shirin Behzadi takes us from her childhood in Iran, through the revolution, exile, and survival in a new country, all the way to her rise as the CEO of a billion-dollar company. It is part memoir, part leadership guide, and part testament to resilience. The book moves from deeply personal family stories to the cold realities of business, weaving them together in a way that shows how character and conviction are built over a lifetime of trials.

The writing surprised me. It isn’t polished in the glossy, distant way you sometimes see in business memoirs. It feels raw, often intimate, as if she is telling you the story over a late-night coffee after years of holding it in. Some chapters hit hard, especially when she recounts her experiences during the revolution and the losses that came with it. Others feel like a quiet conversation about values, leadership, and how to carry empathy into places where profit usually reigns supreme. I found myself moved, sometimes even shaken, by how open she was about trauma and recovery. The sections on illness and learning to walk again made me pause, close the book, and just sit with my own thoughts.

Some sections gon on longer than I expected, while others fly past events that I wanted more detail on. Life is messy, and she doesn’t try to iron out the wrinkles for the sake of a neat story. Her ideas about leadership resonated strongly with me. She refuses the cutthroat style so often celebrated in business, insisting instead that culture, trust, and compassion drive success. I believed her because she lived it, not because she wrapped it in fancy management speak. It’s rare to read a business book that makes you tear up, and yet this one managed that more than once.

I walked away feeling inspired. This is not a fairy tale of overnight success. It is a story of grit, survival, and the slow shaping of a person who carried her scars into the boardroom and refused to let them harden her heart. I would recommend The Unexpected CEO to anyone who has faced adversity, to entrepreneurs who think they have to choose between kindness and profit, and to readers who want to be reminded that success is possible without losing your humanity.

Pages: 320 | ASIN : B0DVD24YV7