MAGGIE JACKSON

Award-winning journalist
Author of Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

One of the world's leading thinkers on societal change, Maggie offers a startling new lens on some of the urgent challenges of our time, from navigating uncertainty to quelling distraction. Her passion, insight, and ability to marry deep analysis with practical strategy make her a sought-after speaker worldwide.

MAGGIE JACKSON

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Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and social critic with a global reach.

Her new book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, explores why we should seek not-knowing in an era of flux and angst. Nominated for a National Book Award and named an Amazon Top New Release, Uncertain was selected as a top book of 2023 and 2024 multiple times, including as one of the 25 best non-fiction titles of 2024 according to the Next Big Idea Club led by Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Dan Pink and Adam Grant. Lauded as “surprising and practical” (Gretchen Rubin) and “remarkable and persuasive” (Library Journal), Uncertain has been featured in media worldwide and is set to appear in multiple languages.

Exclusively represented by BrightSight Speakers, Jackson’s renowned book Distracted: Reclaiming our Focus in a World of Lost Attention (2nd Ed., 2018) sparked a global conversation on the costs of fragmenting our attention. Praised as “influential” (The New Yorker) and “essential” (Nicholas Carr), Distracted won the 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in tech criticism and helped inspire Google’s global initiative to promote digital well-being.

A former columnist for The Boston Globe and foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Europe and Asia, Jackson also has written for the The New York Times and other leading publications around the world. She has appeared widely in the press, including on MSNBC; in The Washington Post and Boston Globe; on NPR’s All Things Considered and On Point shows, and on popular podcasts such as Vox’s Gray Area and Kate Bowler. Jackson has won more than a half-dozen awards for her writings along with numerous fellowships and grants. A high-energy keynote speaker, panelist, and moderator, she has advised leading executives, scientists, educators, and change-makers worldwide.

MAGGIE'S PRESS KIT

Speech topics

Embracing Uncertainty for Growth and Resilience

In this time of flux, uncertainty is not the weakness we fear. Maggie Jackson - award-winning author and social critic known for her prescient writings on social trends - reveals how the uncertain mindset is the superpower most needed today. Through vivid stories and cutting-edge science, Jackson explores the surprising role that skillful unsureness plays in agile decision making and superior performance.

Lost in the Instant: Finding Focus and Connection in an Age of Overload and Distraction

Our attention is embattled as never before, hijacked by “smart” software, undermined by relentless info-streams, and diluted by our own split-focus efforts to keep up with it all. How can we reclaim our focus, wake up to what matters, and once again manage our devices and our days? In this talk from the author who sounded the first warnings of our crisis of distraction, we learn the secrets to rekindling our highest human capacity, the key to good problem-solving, creativity, and human bonds. Drawing on exciting discoveries from the new science of attention, Maggie Jackson reveals what is at risk in this era of always-on connectivity and the secrets to turning data into knowledge and distraction into masterful attention. She offers both a wake-up call and a path forward as we reckon with one of the most pressing problems of our time.

Getting Along Again: An Antidote to Intolerance in a Divided Age

In an era of echo-chamber news, social media flame wars, and rising divisions, how can we respect and value even extreme differences with others? Drawing from an astonishing chapter in US history and the latest in cognitive science, Maggie Jackson tells of a legendary friendship between a KKK leader and a civil rights activist that can help reveal the steps we can take to heal our divisions today. In this talk, we learn the ripple effects across communities of tiny acts of tolerance and discover why opening our gated minds makes us more creative, flexible thinkers in all walks of life. Jackson’s words tell a simple story: of seeing possibility where we least expect it in thought, in others, in the world.

Books

Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure

An unpredictable, changeable world has been with us all along. Liberating ourselves from the ever-alluring but mistaken belief that life could be otherwise offers a startling new vision of human progress and of what it means to know.

In a world that’s growing more terrifyingly unpredictable, the swift certain answer seems just right. But while pursuing the secrets to good thinking in scientific laboratories, operating rooms, corporate boardrooms, and on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, award-winning author Maggie Jackson realized that in devaluing uncertainty we have been overlooking the crucial missing link to the higher-order mind. Once largely neglected as a topic of study, the newly discovered gifts of not-knowing now fascinate the greatest cognitive scientists – and offer us a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day.

Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention

In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively or cultivate meaningful relationships.

What's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age

In our modern world, where technology offers the promise of mobility and flexibility, the lines between work and home become increasingly blurred. In What's Happening To Home? Jackson explores the ever-changing role of home in our lives.

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