During her decades of researching human behavior, Teresa Amabile has published five books and over 150 articles, case studies, and chapters in the fields of psychology and organizational behavior. She was instrumental in establishing the social psychology of creativity – the science of how social environments, such as work environments, can influence creative behavior, primarily by influencing motivation. Her research on creativity appears in her books The Social Psychology of Creativity, Creativity in Context, and Growing Up Creative, as well as numerous articles for scholars and practitioners.

Extending her creativity research, Teresa studied how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their creativity, productivity, commitment, and collegiality, by affecting inner work life – the confluence of motivation, emotions, and perceptions. The findings of that research, based on nearly 12,000 daily work diaries from 238 people, appear in her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Leaders around the world have embraced the lessons of that book.

Teresa’s most recent book, Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You, presents insights from a decade of collaborative research on the psychological, social, and life restructuring challenges of retiring. That research analyzed over 200 interviews from 120 professionals and retirees in U.S. corporations and followed 14 of those people throughout the years of their entire retirement transitions. The findings carry lessons not only for individuals and their families but also for organizational leaders.

Exclusively represented by BrightSight Speakers,Teresa is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School and a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Psychological Association. She has inspired audiences in a variety of settings, including Pixar, Genentech, TEDx Atlanta, Apple, Pfizer, and The World Economic Forum in Davos, and has served on a number of boards. She has received a variety of awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s Organizational Behavior Division, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Organizational Behavior Conference, and an honorary doctorate from BI Norwegian Business School. In 2024, she was named to the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

Teresa holds a B.S. in chemistry from Canisius University and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University.

Follow Teresa on LinkedIn here.