Dr. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, award-winning Harvard lecturer, and expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice.
Cuddy earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005 and was a professor at Harvard Business School from 2008 to 2017, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management from 2006 to 2008, and Rutgers University from 2005 to 2006. She continues to teach at Harvard Business School in executive education.
Books and Speaking
Cuddy’s first book Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Little, Brown, & Co., 2015), is a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Globe and Mail bestseller and has been published in 35 languages. As described in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Presence feels at once concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious—above all, truly powerful.” Amazon selected Presence as the ‘Spotlight Pick of December 2015.’
She is currently writing her second book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts (anticipated publication: 2021), which delves into the psychological causes and consequences of bullying among adults, a pervasive and often devastating problem, and the steps that we all must take to move toward social bravery in our daily lives and broader culture.
Cuddy’s 2012 TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are,” named by The Guardian as ‘One of 20 Online Talks that Could Change Your Life,’ has been viewed more than 50 million times and is the second-most-viewed TED Talk. Focusing on the power of prejudice and stereotyping, nonverbal behavior, the delicate balance of trustworthiness and strength, and the ways in which people can affect their own thoughts, feelings, performance, and psychological and physical well-being, she speaks about how we can become more present, influential, compassionate, brave, and satisfied in our professional and personal lives. She has given keynote addresses to a wide range of audiences all over the world.
RESEARCH AND ACTIVITIES
Cuddy’s highly cited research on stereotyping and prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and presence and performance under stress has been published in top academic journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science, and Psychological Science, and featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Guardian, Wired, Fast Company, Inc., The Globe and Mail, NPR, BBC, and many more. She has been a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, BBC World News, Morning Joe, 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, CNN with Anderson Cooper, among others. Cuddy has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, and CNN.
Cuddy is Co-Founder of the Citizen Confidence Project, an initiative of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders, seeking to develop new measures of societal success that speak to an understanding of humans as active participants, not passive consumers. She is also currently working with the World Economic Forum to develop and teach an annual Executive Leadership Program for residents of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, slated to begin in July 2019.
HONORS AND AWARDS
100 Women of 2017, BBC
Game Changer, Time
50 Women Who Are Changing the World, Business Insider
World’s Top 50 Management Thinkers, Thinkers50
Top 50 Leadership Innovators Changing How We Lead, Inc.
Top 5 HR Thinkers, HR Magazine
100 Science Stars on Twitter, Science
Ten Bostonians Who are Upending the Way We Live, Lead, and Learn, Boston Magazine
Rising Star, Association for Psychological Science
Early Career Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award, Harvard University
Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum