Susan David

Susan David has a PhD in psychology (clinical) and a post-doctorate in emotions research from Yale. She is on faculty at Harvard Medical School and is cofounder and co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, a Harvard Medical School affiliate. She has been awarded many prizes and scholarships for her academic work.

Susan has a passion for keynote speaking and management consulting, and is a renowned executive coach, who applies her knowledge of emotions, human motivation and change to individuals and organizations. She frequently works in the areas of personal leadership, culture, engagement, and people strategy.

Susan has been an advisor to numerous leaders faced with difficult situations, including mergers and acquisitions, leadership transitions, and strategic revisions. She routinely consults at the most senior levels of Fortune 500 companies, and with other global organizations from industries as diverse as financial services, information technology, healthcare, utilities, pharmaceuticals, and mining. Her world-wide client list includes Ernst and Young Global, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations Development Program, BHP Billiton, JP Morgan Chase, GlaxoSmithKline, and Nestlé, among many other multinational firms.

She edited the definitive Oxford Handbook of Happiness with a foreword by His Majesty the King of Bhutan – the first country to measure Gross National Happiness. She also edited Beyond Goals: Effective Strategies for Coaching and Mentoring. She is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and her research has been featured in TIME, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, and Inc.com, among other major publications. Susan’s article Emotional Agility stayed on Harvard Business Review’s “Most Read” list for months. In a short time, nearly a quarter of a million people had downloaded it, and it was named by Harvard Business Review as an “Idea that Shaped Management”. Its popularity was the impetus for her book by the same name, and now translated into multiple languages.