Book excerpt: Part autobiography and part business memoir, former Starbucks vice president Christine McHugh shares how she went from serving single shots to creating programs adopted by stores worldwide. From a young age, Christine McHugh dreamed of finding a place in the bigger world outside her hometown of Fairbanks, Alaska. Inspired by members of her family and the confident businesswomen she saw when visiting Seattle, she packed her bags, enrolled in community college, and took a job slinging espresso at the local coffee chain-a modest thirty-seven-store operation called Starbucks. Presented with the opportunity to move into store management, she promptly quit school and dove headfirst into a career that would span twenty-seven years. In From Barista to Boardroom, McHugh describes her own nontraditional path up the corporate ladder, sharing lessons learned from taking a year off midcareer to backpack around the world, navigating motherhood as a corporate executive, and going back to school at the age of forty. McHugh's personal struggles and moments of triumph, told with frank vulnerability, are an inspiration to anyone looking for an extra shot of motivation to write their own story and craft a worthwhile career.