Amy Cuddy is known around the world for her 2012 TED Talk, which is the second-most viewed talk in TED’s history. A Harvard Business School professor and social psychologist, Cuddy studies how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments influence people. Her research has been published in top academic journals and covered by NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Wired, Fast Company, and more.
Cuddy has been named a Game Changer by Time, a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, one of 50 Women Who Are Changing the World by Business Insider, and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and son. https://www.facebook.com/
Amy’s Story: Rise above the clouds and start your own parade. 🙂
Amy Cuddy grew up in a very small Pennsylvania Dutch town, Robesonia, Pennsylvania. She is a classically trained ballet dancer and worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When she was a sophomore in college she sustained a serious head injury in a car accident. Her doctors told her she was not likely to fully recover and should anticipate significant challenges finishing her undergraduate degree.
Her IQ fell temporarily by two standard deviations, which is about 30 points in IQ test.[She eventually completed her undergraduate studies and then went on to earn a PhD at Princeton. Cuddy has often tweeted of her love for live music, and spent a number of seasons following the Grateful Dead. She has one son.
In August 2014, in Aspen, Colorado, she married Paul Coster.
This Amy Cuddy’s Story. It is only an excerpt of her TEDtalk,
which I highly recommend everyone to watch:
Preview YouTube video Amy Cuddy’s Amazing Story
******************** Amy Cuddy’s Amazing Story **************** 🙂 
The TED conference has made a star of many unlikely people, but perhaps no one more so than Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School, whose talk promises personal transformation with nary a pill, cleanse or therapy bill.
Her rousing presentation in 2012 at TED Global on what she calls “power poses” is among the most viewed TED Talks of all time (it is No. 2; Sir Ken Robinson’s “How Schools Kill Creativity” is No. 1). In its wake, Ms. Cuddy, 42, has attracted lucrative speaking invitations from around the world, a contract from Little, Brown & Co. a book to be published next year, and an eclectic army of posture-conscious followers.
Elementary school students, retirees, elite athletes, surgeons, politicians, victims of bullying and sexual assault, beleaguered refugees, people dealing with mental illness or physical limitations (including a quadriplegic): they have all written to say that adopting a confident pose — or simply visualizing one, as in that last case — delivers almost instant self-assurance.
Lauren Bush Lauren had Ms. Cuddy speak to the staff of Feed, her nonprofit organization. “Power posing is the physical answer to mindfulness,” Ms. Lauren said.
The actress Allison Williams credited Ms. Cuddy’s research with guiding her portrayal of Marnie on “Girls,” albeit via reverse power posing. “Marnie generally has her shoulders forward, inched slightly up, and her arms folded as a line of defense,” Ms. Williams said.
People tend to do curious things after hearing Ms. Cuddy speak. Last May in Las Vegas, she told an auditorium of 1,500 Zappos employees that “making yourself big” for just two minutes before a meeting changes the brain in ways that build courage, reduce anxiety and inspire leadership. “We tested it in the lab — it really works,” she said on stage. In the lobby afterward, clusters of men and women in blue Zappos T-shirts stretched out like starfish and stood like Wonder Woman (hands on hips, legs wide) to try out the effects.
Preview TedTalk video Your body language shapes who you are | Amy Cuddy
