Kelly Ann MacPherson Releases Becoming Anyway, a Candid Memoir About Building a Life While Still Becoming Yourself

A technology executive explores motherhood, ambition, self-doubt, regret and reinvention, with her daughter offering another perspective on the same life.

MIAMI BEACH, FL, UNITED STATES, October 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — MIAMI, FLORIDA | October 1, 2026 — For nearly three decades, Kelly Ann MacPherson built a career leading technology, transformation and change inside some of the world’s most recognized hospitality and consumer brands. From the outside, the path could look carefully planned.
It wasn’t.

She became a mother at twenty-three. She stepped into opportunities before she felt qualified for them. She built a career while simultaneously navigating motherhood, relationships, insecurity, body image, mistakes, major life changes and the persistent belief that perhaps the next accomplishment would finally make her feel like enough.

Today, MacPherson releases Becoming Anyway: The Messy Journey of Building a Life, a Career, and Yourself — All at Once, a memoir about everything that was happening behind the résumé.

“I spent a lot of my life assuming I was supposed to arrive at some finished version of myself,” MacPherson said. “Someone more confident, more certain, more qualified, more comfortable in her own skin. I never became that person. I became anyway.”

Across eleven chapters, MacPherson revisits the experiences that shaped her, from becoming a young mother and stumbling unexpectedly into a career in technology to taking risks, building teams, walking away, starting over, confronting impossible standards and looking differently at decisions she once considered mistakes.

But Becoming Anyway is deliberately not a blueprint for success.

Success and struggle do not occupy separate chapters in MacPherson’s story. They happen at the same time. She was advancing professionally while questioning herself personally. She could lead a room and still wonder whether she belonged in it. She could love being a mother and carry guilt about the moments she missed. And achievement, however meaningful, could not answer the deeper question of whether she believed she was enough.

“There are plenty of stories told once everything makes sense,” MacPherson said. “I wanted to tell the messier version. The one where you make decisions without knowing how they turn out, where you get some things right and some things very wrong, and where becoming doesn’t happen after the uncertainty. It happens in the middle of it.”

The memoir also includes a foreword and afterword by MacPherson’s daughter, Lauren Maddern, offering a second perspective on some of the same years. Mother and daughter remember the travel, ambition, absence, love and unconventional village that surrounded them from different sides of the experience.
The result is less a story about what MacPherson accomplished than about what she understands differently now: readiness often follows action rather than precedes it; strength can mean leaving or staying; leadership does not require having every answer; presence matters; regret can teach without becoming punishment; and a life does not have to be perfectly lived to be deeply meaningful.

Becoming Anyway is for anyone who has ever wondered whether they were ready for what came next, questioned the choices that brought them here, started over, changed direction, carried regret or discovered that becoming who you are rarely happens according to plan.

“You will not get everything right. And you will still build a beautiful life.”

Becoming Anyway is available now in Kindle, paperback and hardcover. Purchase the book and learn more at BecomingAnywayBook.com.

About Kelly Ann MacPherson

Kelly Ann MacPherson is an author, technology executive turned entrepreneur, and independent board director. Over nearly three decades, she has led technology and transformation for some of the world’s most recognized hospitality and consumer brands, including serving as Chief Information Officer at Restaurant Brands International and Chief Technology & Supply Chain Officer at Union Square Hospitality Group.

She is the founder of KAM Advisory, where she works with executives, boards, investors and technology leaders navigating significant technology and transformation decisions. In 2023, she received the Hospitality Technology Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the industry.

Becoming Anyway is her first book.

Email: media@becominganywaybook.com
Book and media information: BecomingAnywayBook.com

Lauren Maddern
KAM Advisory
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
TikTok

Media gallery