Dr. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, and acclaimed keynote speaker. Her writing, research, teaching, and speaking focus on how we can take control of our own thoughts and feelings to affect presence and performance under stress, the causes and outcomes of feeling powerful vs. powerless, our own prejudices and stereotypes, nonverbal behavior, and the delicate balance of projecting both our trustworthiness and our strength.
Cuddy earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005. Rutgers University from 2005 to 2006. She served as a full-time professor at Harvard Business School (2008-2017), Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (2006-2008), and Rutgers University (2005-2006). As a Harvard Lecturer in 2018, she won an Excellence in Teaching award.
Her 2012 TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are,” has more than 65 million views and is the second-most viewed of all time. Her NYT bestseller Presence, described in the NYT Sunday Book Review as “concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious - above all, truly powerful,” has sold more than half a million copies and been published in 35 languages. In 2025, she will publish her next book, Bullies, Bystanders, & Bravehearts (HarperCollins), on the psychology of adult bullying — and how we find the courage to stop it.
For over 20 years, she has rigorously researched stereotyping and prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and presence and performance under stress. Cuddy’s doctoral dissertation at Princeton University presented a paradigm-shifting scientific model that has become one of the most cited theories in social psychology — and has ultimately changed psychologists’ understanding of the nature and mechanics of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination and even more broadly, how we form first impressions of each other. In short, her research revealed that (1) people immediately evaluate each other on two dimensions: warmth/trustworthiness and competence/strength; and (2) these evaluations, accurate or not, powerfully direct how feel about and interact with each other. This theory has changed both academic and popular thinking on leadership, marketing, and diversity and inclusion. In 2022, Amy and her co-authors on this work, Profs. Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, were honored with the Scientific Impact Award, which is given annually to the most impactful paper in social psychology over the previous 25 years.
Her highly-cited research has been published in top academic journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science, and Psychological Science, and a range of internationally-known publications, like The Economist, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Fast Company. She has been a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, and BBC World News, among others. Cuddy also has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, and CNN.
Early in her college career, at age 19, the gifted Cuddy suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. Doctors said she would struggle to fully regain her mental capacity and finish her undergraduate degree. She proved them wrong, eventually going on to earn her doctorate from Princeton in 2005.
Her remarkable road to recovery, battle against imposter syndrome, and ultimate ascension has become a foundational part of her journey as a social scientist. It’s also a facet of her life that resonates powerfully with a strikingly broad range of people.
Cuddy has been honored with numerous awards over her esteemed career. Among the most prominent, she has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of 50 Women Changing the World by Business Insider, a Top 50 Management Thinker by Thinkers50, and one of the BBC 100 Women, honoring inspiring and influential women around the world. She has also received the Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award and the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
Cuddy is currently writing her second book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts, which delves into the psychological causes and consequences of bullying among adults – a pervasive and often devastating problem. Propelled by extraordinary new insights, she’ll share the concrete steps that we must all take to move toward social bravery in our daily lives and broader culture, concluding that we all have the power to become bravehearts.
Amy is an avid skier and roller skater (In fact, she worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate), was a serious classically-trained ballet dancer, and remains a loyal Deadhead and lover of live music. She most enjoys spending time with her husband and son in the mountains, on the ocean, and at live music concerts.
Honors and Awards
Scientific Impact Award, SESP, 2022
Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award, 2018
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