Xbox’s CEO spent her early career taking out trash and selling coupon books—she says the secret to her rise was never obsessing over a dream career |
Xbox’s CEO spent her early career taking out trash and selling coupon books—she says the secret to her rise was never obsessing over a dream career
When Asha Sharma became CEO of Xbox earlier this year, it wasn’t the culmination of a carefully plotted path to the corner office at one of the world’s biggest gaming brands. If anything, it was a reaffirmation of a philosophy she’d followed for years: instead of dreaming of the future, focus on excelling at the job in front of you.
“I never obsessed on what I wanted to be when I grew up,” Sharma said at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, on Tuesday.
“I only obsessed on what I wanted to do—whether it was selling coupon books or putting on concerts—so I could raise money, so I could have my lunch money…whether it was being the best at taking out the trash at the park that I worked at, I just tried to obsess on being great at what I was doing, so I can earn the next job.”
That mantra traces back to her roots in the Midwest, where she earned a business degree from the University of Minnesota, and launched a park center for at-risk teenagers in Minneapolis. From there, she built a career that zigzagged through marketing at Microsoft, a COO stint at startup Porch Group, product leadership roles at Meta, and a COO post at Instacart before returning to Microsoft in 2024 as president of CoreAI........