Harvard Club of Seattle

Angela Duckworth, AB '92, Success Without Burnout

Please join us for an evening with Angela Duckworth, PhD, psychologist, author, MacArthur Fellow, and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Duckworth’s TED talk is among the most viewed of all time with nearly 18 million views. Her first book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance was a #1 New York Times bestseller and has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. Her second book is called Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best.

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Angela Duckworth, AB '92, Success Without Burnout

• Author of Situated and Grit

• Socializing, psychology, mindset, and inspiration

Friday, September 11, 2026

6:30pm - 9:00pm PT

Downtown Seattle

• Exact location will be sent 2 days before

Cost: TBA

• The fee for this event supports our community service programs CAP and SCSF.

• No refunds

Registration ends Wednesday, August 5, 2026, 23:59pm PT

Who’s Invited:

• Harvard Alumni from the College and all the Graduate Schools

We look forward to seeing you at our event!

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Success is a word that will be defined differently depending on who you ask, but achieving “success” in one way or another is a common framework through which we define our worth. And while achieving success may appear like the basic product of hours worked plus passion and determination, we secretly rely on external factors like people, places, and environments to truly achieve our goals. Situations have more effect on us than we realize, and by curating our company, living spaces, and the situations we engage in everyday, success often starts to come quicker than we imagine.

This is the concept that bestselling author, Angela Duckworth, explores in her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best. In her previous work, Grit, Duckworth showed that a common denominator of successful individuals is the combination of passion and perseverance. In Situated, she builds on this idea, this time looking outwards at the environmental factors that support us in reaching our goals. Duckworth’s in-depth research reveals the enormous influence wielded by the objects within arm’s reach, including peers, mentors, and even your zip code.

Duckworth helps us discover why our personality changes, sometimes dramatically, from one situation to another - and how you can harness that shift for your own benefit. We also see how the path of reduced effort is often the most effective and yet counter-intuitive way to reach our destination. Duckworth also shares personal experiences with burnout and trials in her own marriage, demonstrating how learning to change her situation, not herself, made all the difference. If instead of working against ourselves, we find ways to properly situate our life, we can turn our situation into our best ally.

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About Angela Duckworth, Harvard AB '92, Oxford MSc, UPenn PhD

Angela Duckworth is faculty co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs on capabilities other than innate ability that determine achievement.

Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for underserved children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a public school math and science teacher.

Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Angela’s TED talk is among the most-viewed of all time. Her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a #1 New York Times best seller. Angela is also co-host, with Stephen Dubner, of the podcast No Stupid Questions.

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• Books •

Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best

by Angela Duckworth (Author, Narrator)

https://www.amazon.com/Situated-Find-People-Places-Bring/dp/B0GC6NNGFY

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

by Angela Duckworth (Author, Narrator)

https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Angela-Duckworth-audiobook/dp/B01D3AC5VU

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• YouTube Interviews •

Angela Duckworth on Why Grit Is Not Enough

The Context Window with David Deming & Harvard College