This National Book Lovers Day, make room for a different kind of professional development: the kind that starts by slowing down, opening a book and giving yourself enough space to think.
Summer reading does not have to mean switching off from ambition. Sometimes stepping away from the pace of meetings, notifications, and deadlines is exactly what creates room for a better question: What do I want to understand, challenge, or change when I return?
National Book Lovers Day, August 9, is a good moment to trade at least a little scrolling for reading. For women building careers, teams and companies in technology, the right book can provide something that another productivity hack rarely does: perspective.
This year’s WomenTech Network summer reading selection brings together eight books exploring leadership, artificial intelligence, career advancement, collaboration, resilience and financial power. They have one thing in common: they give us something worth thinking about after we close the book.
The best summer read is not necessarily the book you finish fastest. It is the one that changes the question you bring back to work.
At a glance
· LEADERSHIP ·
Chief in Tech
· FINANCIAL POWER ·
It's a Rich Man's World
· HUMAN-CENTERED AI ·
The Worlds I See
· BREAKING BARRIERS ·
Win When They Say You Won't
· TEAM GROWTH ·
Quick Leadership
· EMPATHY & STRENGTH ·
A Different Kind of Power
· BEYOND COMPETITION ·
Uncompete
· CAREER NAVIGATION ·
The Adventures of Women in Tech
· LEADERSHIP
Chief in Tech
For women building careers in technology, Chief in Tech addresses the point where doing excellent work is no longer enough on its own. The book looks at what it takes to move into positions of greater influence: becoming more visible, navigating barriers, negotiating with confidence, building strategic relationships, and developing a leadership presence without losing your authenticity. What makes it particularly relevant for the WomenTech community is its focus on both individual advancement and wider impact. Reaching the top is not presented as the end goal; the bigger opportunity is to use influence to challenge outdated systems and create more space for the women coming next.
Why Pick This Summer: If you are ready to move from being recognized for your work to being recognized for your influence, this is the book to read this summer. Use the quieter pace of summer to think bigger about your next move—and return with a clearer sense of how you want to lead, grow, and be seen in tech.
About the Author
Anna Radulovski is the Founder & Global CEO of WomenTech Network and the bestselling author of Chief in Tech. An award-winning founder, investor, and startup mentor, she is a recognized voice in technology, AI, and inclusive leadership, with work featured by Forbes, Bloomberg TV, and Fortune.
· FINANCIAL POWER
It's a Rich Man's World
Career success and financial power are connected, but they are not the same thing. It's a Rich Man's World expands this reading list beyond promotions and professional growth by examining the financial systems and assumptions that shape women's lives. The founders of Female Invest, Camilla Falkenberg, Emma Due Bitz, and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, look at money through a gender lens, making the case that understanding how wealth works is an important part of creating greater independence and choice. For women in technology—many of whom are already thinking about salary negotiation, entrepreneurship, equity, investing, and long-term career decisions—the book offers a useful reminder: earning more matters, but knowing how to build, protect, and use financial power matters too.
Why Pick This Summer: Professional growth means more when it creates greater freedom and choice. This is a timely read for anyone who wants to use the second half of the year not only to advance their career, but to become more intentional about money, wealth, and long-term financial independence.
About the Authors
Camilla Falkenberg, Emma Due Bitz, and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen are the co-founders of Female Invest, a financial education platform helping women build greater confidence and knowledge around money and investing. Together, they work to make finance more accessible and support women in taking greater control of their financial futures.
· HUMAN-CENTERED AI
The Worlds I See
AI may be one of today's biggest technology conversations, but The Worlds I See reminds us that technological progress is ultimately a human story. Fei-Fei Li combines memoir with the evolution of modern artificial intelligence, bringing readers inside the scientific curiosity, personal experiences, setbacks, and discoveries that helped shape the field of computer vision. For anyone working in technology, the book offers an important counterbalance to the constant stream of AI headlines: a chance to think more deeply about who builds technology, which values shape it, and what kind of future we want it to create. It is both an AI book and a compelling story about curiosity, perseverance, and belonging.
Why Pick This Summer: As AI reshapes almost every corner of technology, this book offers the perspective that fast-moving headlines cannot. It is a chance to slow down, understand the human story behind AI, and think more deeply about the role you want to play in shaping its future.
About the Author
Dr. Fei-Fei Li is one of the most influential figures in modern AI and computer vision. A computer scientist, researcher, and educator, she is widely known for her pioneering work on ImageNet, which played an important role in accelerating progress in visual AI. Alongside her technical contributions, Li has become a leading advocate for a more human-centered approach to artificial intelligence, one that considers the people, values, and societal consequences behind technological progress.
· BREAKING BARRIERS
Win When They Say You Won't
There are moments in a career when talent is not the problem—the barrier is whether other people can imagine you succeeding. Win When They Say You Won't is written for those moments. Drawing on her own journey, Daphne E. Jones transforms experiences of adversity and being underestimated into a practical framework for continuing to grow when the path ahead is not obvious. The appeal of the book is that it goes beyond encouragement. It treats a career almost like a system that can be examined, redesigned, tested, and improved. For women who have encountered closed doors, limiting assumptions, or moments when their own ambitions began shrinking to match other people's expectations, it is a powerful reminder to keep moving.
Why Pick This Summer: Keep this book close if you are entering the second half of the year with a goal that still feels just beyond reach. It is the kind of book that can turn frustration into momentum and remind you that being underestimated does not have to define what happens next.
About the Author
Daphne E. Jones is an accomplished business and technology executive, author, and advocate for women pursuing ambitious careers in STEM and leadership. Her professional journey took her from an early administrative role to senior executive positions at major global organizations, giving her firsthand experience of navigating barriers, reinvention, and high-stakes career transitions. Those experiences form the foundation of her practical approach to helping women take greater control of their professional growth.
· TEAM GROWTH
Quick Leadership
The workplace is changing quickly, but good management still comes down to something fundamentally human: how people feel when they work with you. In Quick Leadership, Selena Rezvani turns that idea into practical, accessible strategies for building trust, navigating uncertainty, communicating more effectively, and creating teams where people can do their best work. Instead of asking readers to adopt another complicated management framework, the book focuses on small behaviors that can have an immediate effect. It is particularly useful for new managers, growing team leads, and experienced professionals who want their management style to evolve alongside the increasingly fast-moving world of work.
Why Pick This Summer: Great teams are rarely built through big gestures; they are shaped by the small decisions leaders make every day. This is an easy, practical read to take into the new season with fresh ideas for building trust, improving communication, and helping your team perform at its best.
About the Author
Selena Rezvani is an author, speaker, and workplace expert whose work focuses on management, confidence, communication, and professional advancement. She is known for translating leadership research into practical advice that professionals can apply in everyday workplace situations, from building trust to navigating difficult conversations. Her accessible approach has made her a widely followed voice on how modern managers can create stronger and more inclusive teams.
· EMPATHY & GROWTH
A Different Kind of Power
What if strength did not require becoming harder? That question runs through A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern's deeply personal exploration of public life, responsibility, self-doubt, empathy, and the experiences that shaped her approach to power. The book is especially compelling for women who have ever felt pressure to change how they communicate or behave in order to be taken seriously. Ardern offers another model—one in which compassion and decisiveness can coexist, sensitivity is not weakness, and authority does not have to come at the expense of humanity. In workplaces increasingly shaped by uncertainty and rapid technological change, that feels less like an alternative philosophy and more like a timely one.
Why Pick This Summer: If you have ever wondered whether strength has to look a certain way to be taken seriously, this book offers a compelling answer. It is a thoughtful summer read for anyone ready to rethink ambition, authority, empathy, and what meaningful influence can look like on your own terms.
About the Author
Jacinda Ardern served as Prime Minister of New Zealand and became internationally recognized for an approach to public responsibility that combined decisiveness with empathy and compassion. During her time in office, she led the country through periods of significant crisis and change while challenging traditional assumptions about how authority should look and sound. Her experiences have made her a distinctive voice in conversations about courage, kindness, responsibility, and the human side of power.
· BEYOND COMPETITION
Uncompete
Careers often encourage us to measure ourselves against somebody else: who was promoted first, who earns more, who has the bigger title, who received the opportunity we wanted. Uncompete challenges the assumption underneath all that comparison—that success is scarce. Ruchika T. Malhotra makes the case for moving beyond zero-sum competition toward collaboration, reciprocity, and collective progress. That argument feels particularly relevant for women in technology, where sponsorship, introductions, shared knowledge, and community can help create opportunities that individual competition never could. Rather than asking how to outperform everyone around you, the book invites readers to consider what becomes possible when success is something we expand together.
Why Pick This Summer: Summer is a good moment to step outside the constant race of comparison and ask whether there is a better way to grow. Uncompete offers a refreshing case for collaboration, shared opportunity, and building success in ways that expand possibilities for others as well as ourselves.
About the Author
Ruchika T. Malhotra is an author and workplace strategist whose work explores inclusion, equity, organizational culture, and the way traditional ideas about success shape professional life. She is also the author of Inclusion on Purpose, which examines how individuals and organizations can move from good intentions toward more meaningful inclusion. In Uncompete, she extends that thinking to question zero-sum competition and explore how collaboration and collective progress can create more sustainable forms of success.
· CAREER NAVIGATION
The Adventures of Women in Tech
What does it really mean to build a long-term career in technology when the industry itself keeps changing? The second edition of The Adventures of Women in Tech revisits that question for the post-2020 landscape, exploring changes in workplace culture, remote work, AI, and the choices women are making about where and whether they want to build their careers. Rather than presenting one perfect roadmap, Alana Karen brings together experiences that reflect how varied women's journeys through tech actually are: the bruises as well as the breakthroughs. That honesty makes it particularly useful for anyone contemplating a pivot, questioning where they belong, or redefining what a successful technology career should look like in the years ahead.
Why Pick This Summer: If the rapid changes in tech have you questioning where your career is heading, this book gives you space to reflect without pretending there is one perfect path. Read it before your next big decision, whether that means staying, moving, pivoting, or redefining what success in tech means to you.
About the Author
Alana Karen is a technology leader, author, and advocate for more honest conversations about what it takes to build a sustainable career in tech. Drawing from decades of experience in the technology industry, her work explores workplace culture, career development, inclusion, and the experiences that influence whether women stay, grow, pivot, or leave the sector. Through The Adventures of Women in Tech, she brings together individual stories to show that there is no single path to belonging or succeeding in technology.
Ideas Worth Carrying Forward
The technology landscape may be moving faster than ever, but growth still begins with something remarkably simple: making space to think, question, learn, and see the world from a different perspective.
These eight books approach that journey from very different angles—from navigating the AI era and building influence to challenging competition, breaking barriers, rethinking power, strengthening financial confidence, and finding your own path through a changing industry. Together, they remind us that preparing for the future of tech is not only about keeping up with the newest tools. It is also about becoming more intentional about how we lead, collaborate, make decisions, build careers, and create impact.
This National Book Lovers Day, consider giving yourself something more valuable than another item on your summer to-do list: a book that changes the way you see what is possible. The best summer read is ultimately the one that meets you where you are and leaves you thinking differently about where you could go next.