One Red Shoe: The Story of Corporate America's First Woman

This is the journey over five decades of Peg Wyant who navigated from Mad Men through Me Too and motherhood. Younger women trying excel at being a working mom can learn from the methods she developed.

At the Procter and Gamble Company, Peg would achieve a series of first, the first woman to go into the field on sales training, to become a female brand manager, to work all the way through pregnancy and, finally, to report directly to the CEO. Then she continued breaking barriers by starting a venture capital firm focused on women, a real estate development company band clubs of her own.

Wyant tells her story frankly. She spares no words in describing the challenges she faced as a woman, in the corporate and other worlds where female managers were rare to nonexistent.

Along the way she and her husband, Jack, raised four children. While their daughter described their upbringing as ‘captain crunch and chaos,’ all four became squash champions, Ivy League graduates, and leaders.

There are underlying lessons for any women trying to combine motherhood and career — start before you’re ready and figure it out, seldom have a bad day, and ladies, it’s up to us.