9Ambition
Having a deeper calling at the outset of one's career is not a prerequisite for long‐term success. Such realizations may retrospectively visit us in the middle of our career.
Yumi Narushima has built her career dedicated to the education industry—spending a combined 26 years at Benesse, an education conglomerate, sandwiching a five‐year stint running a girls’ junior and senior high school in Tokyo. Being an educator was not her original aspiration out of college—she stumbled into education not by choice but by chance.
Instead of a deeper calling, however, she had the ambition to quickly ascend within Benesse. Overturning Japanese cultural inducement toward modesty, especially for women, Narushima was never shy about announcing her ambitions.
Ambition, underpinned by Narushima's dedication to performance, which earned her a reputation in her early 30s as a fixer of struggling businesses within Benesse, paid off in two ways. First, it fueled her passion for the education industry, which she became convinced would be her life's work. Second, she honed her leadership skills and learned to leverage her staff members to enhance group‐wide performance.
Even though Narushima achieved her professional success while simultaneously raising a family—she is married with a son—her life story is not about “having it all” in a perfectly balanced way. Her priority was clearly on professional success, on top of which she managed personal life events with help of others around her as ...
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