Angela Duckworth

Angela Duckworth was born in 1970 and grew up near Philadelphia, the daughter of a chemist. She earned an undergraduate degree in neurobiology from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude, then won a Marshall Scholarship to complete a master's in neuroscience at Oxford. Rather than continuing straight into research, she spent several years as a McKinsey management consultant and then as a math and science teacher in public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia — the classroom experience that led her, in her thirties, back to graduate school for a PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, studying under positive-psychology researcher Martin Seligman.

Duckworth is now the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where her research centers on grit and self-control as predictors of achievement distinct from IQ or talent. In 2013 she was named a MacArthur Fellow for this work, and her 2013 TED Talk on grit is among the most-viewed TED talks ever recorded. She co-founded Character Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to research on character development in young people, and the Grit Scale she developed has been used by organizations ranging from the U.S. military to professional sports teams to Fortune 500 companies.

Her first book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016), was a #1 New York Times bestseller and became the primary vehicle through which 'grit' entered mainstream discussion of education, parenting, and workplace performance. She followed it with a second book, Situated, extending her research into how environment and surrounding circumstances shape performance and behavior.