Amy Cuddy Keynote Speaker
- Social Psychologist
- Award-Winning Harvard Lecturer
- Bestselling Author
Amy Cuddy's Biography
Social psychologist, New York Times–bestselling author, and award-winning Harvard lecturer Dr. Amy Cuddy is an expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice. She earned her PhD from Princeton University in 2005 and served as 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. Amy has taught in Executive Education programs at Harvard Business School and, more recently, at UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Amy’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, Publishers Weekly, and Globe and Mail bestseller. The book has been published in 35 languages and sold more than half a million copies. As noted in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Cuddy brings an abundance of humility and charm to the page… Presence feels at once concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious—above all, truly powerful.” Amazon selected Presence as its “Best Book of December 2015.”
Dr. Cuddy’s TED Talk, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are—the second most viewed TED Talk of all time—has more than 70 million views. Named by The Guardian as “one of 20 online talks that could change your life,” the talk has influenced how confidence under pressure is taught and practiced worldwide. A pop-culture phenomenon, Amy and her work have been referenced in television shows including Ted Lasso, Grey’s Anatomy (four times), Sex Education, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Bold Type, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, among others.
Focusing on prejudice and stereotyping, nonverbal behavior, the balance of trustworthiness and strength, and the ways individuals can influence their own thoughts, emotions, performance, and well-being, Amy studies, writes, and speaks about how people can become more present, influential, compassionate, and fulfilled in both professional and personal life. She is currently writing her second book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts (Mariner, 2023), which examines the psychological causes and consequences of adult bullying and outlines steps toward cultivating social bravery in everyday life and culture.
Amy has been recognized widely for her impact, including being named one of the BBC’s 100 Women, a Time “Game Changer,” one of Business Insider’s “50 Women Who Are Changing the World,” one of the World’s Top 50 Management Thinkers by Thinkers50, one of Inc.’s Top 50 Leadership Innovators Changing How We Lead, one of the top five HR Thinkers by HR Magazine, one of Twitter’s 100 Science Stars by Science, one of Boston Magazine’s “10 Bostonians Who Are Upending the Way We Live, Lead, and Learn,” a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, an Early Career Award recipient from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, a recipient of Harvard’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Amy’s highly cited research on stereotyping and prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and presence and performance under stress has been published in leading academic journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, and Psychological Science. Her work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Guardian, Wired, Fast Company, Inc., The Globe and Mail, NPR, and the BBC. She has appeared 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, and CNN with Anderson Cooper. Amy has also written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, CNN, and other publications.
Amy Cuddy's Speaking Topics
Real Power: The Trust-Driven, Science-Based Leadership We Need Now
Too often, bravado is mistaken for leadership. The loudest voice in the room, the refusal to admit doubt, the performance of certainty—especially in uncertain times—can look like strength. But domineering leadership may suppress dissent, discourage innovation, and create a culture of silence that fails under pressure.
In this data-driven and deeply practical talk, Dr. Amy Cuddy shows why dominance doesn’t deliver—and how trust-based leadership outperforms it on every meaningful metric. Drawing on decades of psychological research and timely case studies from highperforming organizations, she reveals the measurable costs of fear-based leadership—and the tangible returns of trust.
Your audience will learn:
- Why dominance leads to surface-level compliance, not sustained engagement
- How fear-based leadership erodes innovation, execution, and ethical behavior
- What the data say about trust: teams led by high-trust managers show higher performance, lower attrition, faster decision cycles, and greater resilience
- Concrete behaviors that build trust: listening deeply, rewarding credibility over confidence, creating psychological safety, and sharing power wisely
This talk is ideal for executive teams, people leaders, and organizations under pressure to perform without sacrificing culture.
Takeaway:
Domineering leadership creates fragile organizations. Trust-based leadership builds teams that adapt, innovate, and endure. In today’s workplace, trust isn’t a soft skill—it’s a strategic imperative.
Body & Mind: How the Way We Move, Breathe, and Carry Ourselves Changes Everything
In high-performance environments—whether in sales, R&D, operations, or client strategy—we tend to rely on mental discipline to stay focused, persuasive, and adaptable. But the science is clear: how we use our body directly shapes how we think, feel, and interact.
Amy Cuddy draws on two decades of research across psychology, neuroscience, and physiology to show that posture, breath, movement, and vocal tone regulate neural activity in the brain regions responsible for attention, emotion, memory, and decision-making. These aren’t hacks or habits—they’re pathways into clarity, calm, and presence.
This talk offers a powerful, science-based framework for using the body as a tool for better thinking, communication, and resilience—across roles and industries.
In this talk, Amy explores:
- How upright, open posture activates brain networks linked to confidence, creativity, and cognitive flexibility
- Why slow, steady breathing can calm the amygdala and improve focus under pressure
- How small changes in gait, gesture, and vocal tone influence not just how others perceive us—but how we perceive ourselves
- The neuroscience behind why movement—especially rhythmic or synchronized movement—improves memory, social connection, and problem-solving
- Practical, research-backed strategies for using the body to manage anxiety, prepare for high-stakes interactions, and recover cognitive clarity in moments of overload
Personal Power & Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
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, Amy Cuddy draws from psychology and neuroscience research, personal narratives, and her own challenges, focusing on:
- What holds us back from being present and effective in these challenging situations?
- How does feeling powerless (vs. powerful) affect our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, in turn undermining our ability to be smart, creative, attentive, and effective when we most need to be?
- How do we retrain our nervous systems to liberate us -- rather than inhibit us -- in these moments?
- How does our own presence help others to be present -- and facilitate the building of trust in stressful interactions?
- What does powerful vs. powerless body language look like?
- Can we adapt our own body language -- breathing, speech patterns, simple and complex posture, and movement -- to directly affect how powerful we feel (and how powerful we appear to others)?
Audiences will be moved and inspired, leaving Amy’s keynote with a fresh, life-changing perspective on themselves and their interactions, and a concrete and immediately actionable set of simple techniques to harness their own personal power and presence, freeing them to perform and interact at their very best -- and empower others to do the same.
Videos of Amy Cuddy
Articles, Media & Podcasts
Books by Amy Cuddy
Check Amy Cuddy's speaking fees and availability
Discover other speakers
