In Full Circle, Erin Callan Montella traces her experiences as a young girl in Queens, New York to the highest-ranking woman on Wall Street during the financial crisis as chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Erin recounts her path of achievement starting as a promising young student and athlete and, ultimately, how she allowed her career and its demands to become the center of her life. She sacrificed all other priorities and relationships along the way, throwing work-life balance to the wind. The story reveals the subtleties of the everyday decisions that led collectively to a work-centric existence over a twenty-year career.
Set against the backdrop of the dramatic circumstances at Lehman Brothers in 2008, Erin discloses her own struggle as events spiraled out of control. Ultimately, her resignation from her executive role prior to the Lehman bankruptcy resulted in a devastating personal crisis as her career crumbled revealing no foundation beneath it. We learn of the journey back to change her life with a semblance of present day peace and happiness. Full Circle provides a unique inside and emotional perspective of the sacrifices Erin made to achieve extreme career success and the self-awareness required to return to being the fundamentally grounded person she was as a child.
"Callan wrote her book, Full Circle: A Memoir of Leaning In Too Far and the Journey Back, to try to share the lessons she learned--painfully and publicly--about the dangers of prioritizing one's career... While the cautionary work-life balance angle of the book is powerful, Callan's memoir will also serve as an important part of the historical record of what went wrong at Lehman and on Wall Street in general. It offers a case study of the sort of overachiever personality that thrives in finance, which carried Callan to the top of the industry."
"With Full Circle: A memoir of leaning in too far and the journey back, Callan takes control of her controversial career story and tells it with candor and finesse and self-understanding that comes only after many years, much distance, and a slow recovery from her critical role in the rise and fall of one of Wall Street's most storied firms. Beyond providing an insider's perspective that will engross people who savored Wall Street tomes like Too Big to Fail, Full Circle reveals details that make this book far more personal - and sometimes juicier - than the other books that have been published."
"As someone who was named to Lehman's executive committee at the end of 2007, and thrust into the middle of the bank's demise almost immediately, Callan had remarkable proximity to one of the biggest financial collapses in modern history. Full Circle, in parts, delivers the juice some readers are likely coveting... But dredging up Lehman dirt is not Callan's main focus in Full Circle... In fact, the book actually reads as something of a love story. It is an ode to a man she calls her savior and hero, Anthony Montella, a retired firefighter... From the title onward, Full Circle is about Callan's pointed decision to lean out. It is a choice that seems to have brought Callan much peace and happiness, and anyone who reads the book feels a sense of relief that she climbed out of her own darkness to get there."
"Former Lehman Brothers CFO Erin Montella's new memoir offers a unique perspective of the events that led to the financial crisis."
