Dr. Amy Cuddy

Many of our biggest challenges call for us to be calmly confident, focused, and open to hearing others. Too often, we approach these high-pressure interactions with fear, execute with anxiety and distraction, and leave with regret. Based on her best-selling book Presence, Dr. Cuddy draws from psychology and neuroscience research, personal narratives, and her own challenges. 

Audiences will leave with a fresh, life-changing perspective on themselves and their interactions, and a concrete set of simple techniques they can act on immediately to harness their power and presence, freeing them to perform and interact at their very best — and empower others to do the same.

About Amy Cuddy, Ph.D.

How can we improve our relationships, performance, and well-being by harnessing our power and taking control of our thoughts, feelings, and actions?

Dr. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist, bestselling author, and keynote speaker. Her writing, research, teaching, and speaking focus on how stress impacts presence and performance and the causes and outcomes of feeling powerful vs. powerless. She also explores prejudice and stereotyping, nonverbal behavior and the delicate balance of projecting trustworthiness and strength, and most recently, the psychology of bullying, bystanding and social bravery.

With a Ph.D. from Princeton University, Dr. Cuddy taught at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Throughout her academic career, she’s been honored with some of the highest commendations for teaching and research, including the Excellence in Teaching Award from Harvard University and the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology for her extensive research on intergroup conflict. She continues to teach as a guest lecturer in Executive Education at Harvard Business School and UCLA-Anderson School of Management.

Dr. Cuddy’s 2012 TED Talk, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are, is the second-most popular of all time, with more than 70 million views. Her New York Times bestseller, Presence, described in the NYT Sunday Book Review as “...concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious - above all, truly powerful,” has sold over 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 bullying among adults — and how we find the courage and tools to stop it. 

An avid roller skater and skier, Dr. Cuddy is a live-music lover (actually, a devoted Deadhead!), adventuring partner to her husband Paul, and hype mom to her son, Jonah, a guitarist, producer, songwriter, and student at Berklee College of Music. She lives in Venice, California.