Private Equity

Carrie Sun was in her twenties when she stepped into the fast and furious world of high finance. An immigrant from China who grew up in the Midwest and graduated from M.I.T., hers was a world of 24/7 striving in which working hard was the ultimate virtue. After a grueling interview process, she lands a position at one of Wall Street's most covert investment firms.

She begins her job eager to learn, grow, and do whatever it takes to dazzle her billionaire boss. But the deeper Sun ventures into this white, male-dominated, time-starved, luxury-laden world, the less she recognises herself. It takes playing the game at the highest level, amidst the ultimate winners in our winners-take-all economy, for Sun to question her past that brought her to the top and, perhaps, find the courage to break free and leave it all behind.

Coming in the midst of a global reckoning with burnout, when many - and perhaps especially women - are reevaluating their relationship to work, Sun's story illuminates the struggle for balance in a world of extremes. It is a universal tale of self-creation. Challenging us to account for some of our most deeply held beliefs about work and money and identity, Private Equity is a stunning, dramatic story of personal transformation within an unjust system.