Author Chat: The Mirror Effect by Dr. Sheila Gujrathi

In a world where many leaders struggle to be seen and heard, Dr. Sheila Gujrathi offers a fresh approach. The Mirror Effect provides a practical roadmap for women and marginalized professionals to reclaim their power, navigate challenging environments, and thrive authentically.

In this edition of Author Chat, Disrupt Your Career speaks with Sheila about her debut book, exploring her three-part framework—know yourself, understand your environment, and set yourself up for success—to help leaders build clarity, resilience, and meaningful impact. An edited version of our conversation with Sheila follows.

Sheila, what inspired you to write The Mirror Effect? 

It has been a labor of love over the last four years that I’ve been working on this effort, and quite a journey – not one that I had set out to embark upon. I never really considered myself an author. I also started writing it for my younger self. It’s the book I wish I had as I was starting my professional career and rising up through those corporate leadership ranks where there’s no playbook or road map. 

I wrote it because at a later stage in my career, I realized when I was working in some of my companies that I had been operating from a place of fear. And so, in describing this more, I think I’ve always been “another”. I’m a woman, I’m a person of color, I’m a woman of color. I’ve often been in environments, whether that’s in medicine or in STEM environments, scientific environments, in biotech and pharma, and then in the leadership ranks where I was the one and only. I wasn’t really surrounded by people who looked like me, thought like me, acted like me, spoke like me. I spent my life trying to fit into these environments, adopt the language they used, look like them, fit into this culture. I grew up here in the United States and always doing my best to fit into these environments and try to belong. That was really my goal of survival and then striving. I think I didn’t even realize how much that had taken over my life. This is true for any group that could potentially be marginalized or disenfranchised or just anyone who feels “other”. And so when I was leading in these companies, despite a lot of successes I had – I took three companies public, I had multiple exits, I’ve played all these different leadership roles, C-level executive, founding companies being a CEO, being a chairwoman – I still realized one day that I was really operating from this place of fear. It’s what I call the FIDS: Fear, Insecurity, Doubt, and Shame. 

It was an employee — someone I had worked with for over two decades — who helped me see this. One day, he shared with me a poem by Marianne Williamson, which speaks to the idea that we don’t fear our inadequacy; we fear our power beyond measure. For the first time, I actually saw myself through someone else’s eyes that I was powerful. I was a very confident leader and I was doing amazing things but I wasn’t feeling it internally. That was a big aha moment for me and I wanted to shift my mindset. So it came from this very deep place inside of me saying if I could share these learnings that I’ve had and realizations and impart them to my peers and to the next generation of leaders, how transformative could that be and if I could alleviate or at least help them avoid some of the suffering I’ve experienced in my professional and personal life that would be very meaningful for me. 

And what was your journey like turning those reflections into a book?

How I wrote the book has just been chapter by chapter trying to make it as real and alive as possible for the reader. I share lots of stories. I bring in a lot of the resources that I’ve used in my life practically: authors I’ve gone to, tools I’ve used, journaling different types of techniques and I created a workbook journal to go along with the book to try to make it as practical and have impact as possible for the reader. 

What are the key concepts and messages in your book? 

The title is called the Mirror Effect. When I was writing this book, I had lots of working titles and this was meant to be giving somewhat of a road map for the reader and for the audience to help set them up for success in a way that I just hadn’t experienced. I didn’t have these types of insights or lessons learned all of those things that readily available for someone who had been on the front line and was imparting that: older self to younger self, friend, mentor, sponsor. I had some of those, but not in the way that I think I really would have liked. I’m trying to be that for the for the reader, their trusted friend and mentor, sponsor, colleague, mirror. I ended up doing a TEDx talk last year, and the unifying concept and the one idea I really wanted to focus on was this idea of mirrors and what does it mean to have mirrors in your life and how transformative that can be for you. Because I hadn’t experienced that until later stages of my career and also part of this journey where I created an organization with some other colleagues called the Biotech CEO Sisterhood which I’d love to talk about as well. The TEDx talk was called ‘Shattering the glass ceiling by finding the right mirrors’ and I brought that concept into the book as well. So, the key concept of the book is using mirrors to transform hopefully your life but definitely your leadership. 

There’s a three-part framework. The first part of the book is about holding up your own mirror and knowing thyself. A key theme in this part of the book is about confronting your inner critics all the shooting that we do on ourself and those FIDS that rule our life that fear, insecurity, doubt and shame. I call it the inner glass ceiling. Raising awareness, first of all: you may have some of those limiting thought patterns and beliefs, but also importantly, how to break free of them. How to get to the point where you realize that you are powerful beyond measure, that you absolutely belong, you’re deserving, you’re worthy, and you don’t have to do anything or change yourself to be that, and actually if anything, you have to lean into your authentic self because that’s where true power lies and that’s where you find your voice, your values, your purpose and your leadership style.

The second part is around reflecting on your surroundings and understanding your environment. I spent some time on this because I found myself in these strange environments that were very unfamiliar to me. I didn’t really have the exposure or the conditioning or the preparation sometimes to step into those environments. I think as women, maybe other minority groups, we aren’t surrounded by people who have played those leadership roles. So often times we’re the first one in our families, in our generations, and multiple generations that are getting these opportunities, and we’re not necessarily prepared for what we find and sometimes the rules of the game change, the political dynamics change. So how do we navigate these types of environments and how do we really understand what’s happening around us? Also how do we pay attention to some warning signs and red flags when we encounter them that maybe there are things that we need to address proactively. So I talk about this in the second part of the book I do address toxic work environments, working with maybe some challenging personalities, and then how do you be your best self while navigating those environments.

The third part is: Make a life worth mirroring and set yourself up for success. There I focus in different areas that I found incredibly helpful for me along my journey, such as building your networks and your personal board of directors and finding your people that are going to support you in your journey – something I didn’t do enough of in the early parts of my career. Secondly, Mastering the art of negotiation without compromising your integrity. We’re negotiating all the time, whether we know it or not. So, it’s best to really be intentional and proactive about understanding what style works for you and how you’re comfortable doing that. The third is around harnessing your presence. A lot of communication is non-verbal and the way we show up that reflects our inner state of belief is incredibly powerful. I talk a lot about tools in order to be that powerful confident self that we can be. These are some of the themes I talk about in the book and I have this journal, exercises, journaling prompts to help them become alive for us. 

Can you share one particularly powerful, impactful story or case study that will get our audience motivated to go out and buy the book and learn from it? 

In every chapter I try to include stories. These are stories from myself and my own journey. They’re stories from countless women and men that I’ve mentored throughout the years. We have a lot of similarities and shared experiences. I wanted to share them so that the audience don’t feel alone and don’t say, « Oh, this is only happening to me », because it’s not. It’s actually somewhat common that many of us have these experiences, so, you’re not alone. Hopefully just by reading them, that’ll be comforting. When I’ve actually shared my stories to people I’ve mentored and to audiences, they were like, « Oh, well, that happened to you? » And I’m like, « Yes, that happened to me. » And they’re like, « Oh, thank God. It’s not just me. » And I’m like, « Absolutely. it’s not you. It’s a lot of things, but there’s nothing wrong with you. So that’s the purpose of sharing these stories and making it feel that they can be inspired by people who’ve confronted those challenges. 

I actually start out the book with a story of Sarah who was very excited about stepping into a CEO role. She was at a company, she was promised that she was going to be the CEO, but while she was there, her whole environment changed and she noticed people were talking to her differently. All of a sudden, the promises that were discussed earlier weren’t really being discussed and talked about anymore. So, she was paying attention to not only what was being said, but what was not being said very importantly. She was reading the room and thinking: « This isn’t going the way I thought it was going to go. » I had a chance to have a conversation with her during this time of deliberation and when the sands were shifting, if you will, and I started counseling her saying: “Well, you need to understand what’s really going on here.” She was actually miserable. When I was kind of just as a friend saying, you just seem so unhappy. You were so happy before. Life is short. Is this really the company you want to work for? These are very important decisions we make. And actually through some counseling and deliberation, she decided to leave that company and found an amazing group of investors that supported her in her CEO role at her next company. She got to build her own board of directors and her own team with so much autonomy, independence and most importantly support from an amazing group of investors who truly believed in her. She just became her thriving self again and she built the company of her dreams. That’s a story I want to share that we often find ourselves in these environments – no blame or shame – but what can we do to empower ourselves you have more choice than you realize. You can absolutely find the right environments that you want to work in, commit to and thrive in. 

Order Sheila’s book The Mirror Effect: A Transformative Approach to Growth for the Next Generation of Female Leaders

Sheila’s TEDx Talk ‘Shattering the glass ceiling by finding the right mirrors’  

Marianne Williamson’s poem ‘Our Deepest Fear’

Sheila’s personal website

Sheila’s LinkedIn profile

To listen to this Author Chat podcast episode