Angela Duckworth

Angela Lee Duckworth grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and graduated from Cherry Hill High School East before attending Harvard College, where she earned a B.A. in Neurobiology (A.B., magna cum laude) in 1992. She was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and completed an M.Sc. in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford in 1996, and later earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. After her master’s degree, Duckworth worked briefly as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and then taught math and science in public high schools in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York City for several years. While still early in her career she founded a nonprofit summer school for underserved children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and later received state recognition. Duckworth joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty (rising to named professorship) where her research focuses on non-IQ traits—especially grit and self-control—as predictors of success across domains such as West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, novice teachers, salespeople, and students. She co-founded Character Lab, a nonprofit dedicated to translating character-development research into practice, and served as its CEO/scientific director before stepping back to focus on research and teaching. Duckworth’s TED Talk on grit is among the most viewed TED talks, and her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance became a New York Times bestseller and brought widespread attention to character traits in education and business. Her work has led to consulting and advisory roles with organizations including the World Bank and various professional teams and corporations, and she has been widely profiled and interviewed in mainstream media.