Adam Grant is a professor of management at The Wharton School. He is a leading expert on how we can find motivation and meaning in work and live more generous, creative, and successful lives.
Grant earned his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan. His dissertation explored how job design influences motivation and prosocial behavior.
At age 28, Adam Grant became Wharton’s youngest tenured professor. Currently, Dr. Grant is the Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management Professor of Psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Wharton, Grant served as a visiting scholar in England and taught at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School where he won multiple teaching awards.
Before academia, Grant worked setting advertising contracts through negotiations at Let’s Go Publications, where he set company records and was a licensed conflict mediator. Grant has given TED talks on topics like “givers vs takers” and “original thinkers”, which have been viewed over 25 million times. Another interesting aspect of his background is that Grant was a professional magician during college and Junior Olympic springboard diver, highlighting his diverse talents.
Adam Grant is the host of the podcasts WorkLife and ReThinking. He co-founded Give and Take, Inc., a company that makes a software called Givitas, which was designed to help organizations implement principles from his book Give and Take. Grant serves on the board of Lean In and is the chair of the Creative Advisory board of EXILE Content.
Dr. Grant is a leading expert on topics like generosity, helping behavior, job design, meaningful work, leadership, culture, originality, work motivation, and success. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of books like Give and Take, Originals, Option B (with Sheryl Sandberg), Power Moves, and Think Again, which have sold millions of copies worldwide. He has also published numerous highly-regarded journal articles:
His research has been featured in leading publications, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science, and Academy of Management Journal, in addition to publications in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and TED Ideas. He has also earned major awards including:
At Wharton, Dr. Grant teaches MBA and undergraduate courses on leadership, teamwork, negotiation, and organizational behavior. He has particular expertise in negotiations, using an experiential learning approach to help students develop negotiation skills. He also teaches courses such as Organizational Behavior, Synchrony at Work, Founding of Teamwork & Leadership, and Independent Study at Wharton.
Grant’s negotiations course allows students to explore their talents, skills, shortcomings, and strengths as a negotiator in a safe setting, and to learn about themselves and how they respond in specific situations. He has received extremely positive feedback for his teaching, ranked by students the best professor at Wharton from 2011 to 2017.
Adam Grant also has editorial roles in top journals and is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at major conferences. He has received distinguished scholarly achievement awards from Academy of Management, APA, and NSF. He is recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers, making Fortune’s 40 under 40 list and named World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader.
His speaking and consulting clients include major firms like Google, NBA teams, and Bridgewater. Grant has served on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon. His books have influenced workplace practices around generosity, motivation, and creativity. Further, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times on work and psychology topics. A few notable popular press articles include:
With over four million followers on social media, Grant is able to reach a wide audience in addition to his students at Wharton, illustrating the impact of his research.
