Lessons from bossy, caring, fearless, vulnerable, relentless, forgiving, smart, humble women at the top show readers how to fuel strengths, how to be fierce and feminine leaders, and how to nurture their authentic selves.

Women need to know it’s okay to be kind and assertive. Between Grit and Grace will show you that success comes when you are comfortable living in the space between grit and grace—grit meaning being resilient and taking charge of your life (socially-acceptable masculine attributes), and grace meaning showing others mercy (socially-acceptable feminine trait). Author Sasha Shillcutt, MD, a nationally lauded, award-winning physician and speaker, will explain how to give yourself permission to disappoint nice people (and know that you are still a nice person anyway). You’ll learn how to stop apologizing for showing your strength and grit, and embrace your grace, too. This is where personal peace lives.

Dr. Shillcutt, taught herself how to be a gritty, grace-filled leader and live authentically. Now, she wants to help other women be brave enough to do the same. Her passion is empowering and encouraging women to be brave enough in their professional and personal lives. She believes women cannot be too brave, too kind, too strong, too smart, too funny, too beautiful, or too authentic.

Using real-life stories—ranging from women in law and medicine to women in education—the book explains how women can be feminine and formidable. Leadership and lipstick are not mutually exclusive. You’ll realize you can be bossy and caring, fearless and vulnerable, relentless and forgiving, smart and humble—and make it to the top. Across the space of ten chapters, you’ll learn how to navigate the forces that have shaped the modern workplace while doing so with grit and grace. When a woman lives authentically—she succeeds.

Sasha Shillcutt, MD, is a wife, mother, award-winning physician, clinical scientist, national educator, writer, and speaker. A board-certified cardiac anesthesiologist and tenured associate professor, she received a bachelors’ degree in biology from William Jewell College, and her MD degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. After finishing a residency in anesthesiology during which she served as chief resident, she completed an executive fellowship in perioperative echocardiography at the University of Utah Medical Center. She has published close to 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles in professional journals including the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association and contributed chapters to four books. In 2016, Sasha was awarded the national American Medical Association’s Women Physician’s Inspiring Physician Award by her peers.