I Will Be the Woman He Loved: Learning to Live Again on the Thames Path

Who are we when we lose what defines us?

The daughter of Russian and Croatian refugees, an ostracized immigrant, and a white girl at a mostly Black school, Tania Romanov defied the odds. Climbing from public schoolroom to head of the boardroom, she became one of the first women CEOs in tech. Along the way she also found love.

In I Will Be the Woman He Loved, her most personal and timely memoir yet, Romanov chronicles her search for identity after the end of her trailblazing career and the loss of her soulmate, Harold. Over a two-week walk along England's Thames Path, Romanov reflects on their love story, world travels, and battle against cancer-reflections that reveal a lifelong fight to be herself.

Revisiting past lives, loves, and lessons, Romanov recounts the challenges of her immigrant childhood in San Francisco and being a successful young female executive in a pre-#MeToo, male-dominated workplace. Facing her loss and grief, she struggles to come to terms with a future very different from what she imagined-one in which she must rediscover her love of life and redefine herself yet again.