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 product. Each move looked less like a master plan and more like someone who kept proving herself until the next door opened. Xbox has fallen behind Sony and Nintendo—and Sharma is banking on new energy Now in her late 30s, Sharma was tapped in February to replace long-serving gaming chief Phil Spencer—a move that raised eyebrows given her non-gaming background. The business she inherited hasn’t exactly been humming: according to Microsoft’s most recent earnings report, Xbox hardware revenue fell 33% year-over-year, with content and services down another 5%. In many ways, Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Switch have pulled ahead in the console wars, and the pressure on Sharma to reverse course has been loud. But her early moves have at least inj