Adam Grant

Adam Marshall Grant was born August 13, 1981, and grew up in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa, and later completed a Ph.D. in organizational psychology at the University of Michigan in under three years. Before academia, Grant worked at Let’s Go Publications as advertising director and performed professionally as a magician and Junior Olympic springboard diver, experiences he has cited as formative. He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and joined the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, where he became the school’s youngest tenured professor at age 28 and later the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management. Grant’s research has addressed topics including giving versus taking, creativity and original thinking, meaningful work, and workplace culture; his studies have been published in leading psychology and management journals and have been applied to improve performance, reduce burnout, and motivate safety behaviors across professions such as engineering, sales, medicine, and education.