Amy Cuddy: A Speaker with Ambition

by Nikolaos Panaousis

Every year, Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) International Honor Society holds an annual convention, PTK Catalyst (formerly, Nerd Nation), to celebrate, encourage, and recognize student success. Attending this convention comes with many benefits, including the opportunity to listen to world-class speakers, expand your views of the world, meet representatives from four-year colleges, gain key job and life skills, make new friends and connections, etc. In a few words, the benefits are countless. 

Personally, one of the most exciting parts of the convention is listening to the speakers. Past convention attendees have seen John Legend, Billie Jean King, and Malcolm Gladwell. Such speakers inform and inspire the crowd, with their ground-breaking ideas, inspiration and knowledge. This year, one of the speakers that I am especially interested see and listen to is Amy Cuddy—an American social psychologist, author and lecturer known for her research on stereotyping and discrimination, emotions, power, and the effects of social stimuli on hormone levels. 

Ms. Cuddy became widely famous after conducting research on “power posing” and during her 2012 TED talk, where she revealed that we can change other people’s perceptions, and perhaps even our own body chemistry, simply by changing body positions. I first watched her TED talk three years ago for my sociology class in high school; however, I hadn’t paid the necessary attention to it to understand her concepts and her research. Now, a few years later, I can say with no exaggeration that I am fascinated and amazed by her contributions to the scientific community. 

Ms. Cuddy wasn’t supposed to be a successful scientist—early in her college life she suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, and doctors were reluctant about her future life. They believed that because of her injury, she would not be able to regain the mental capacity necessary to event accomplish basic cognitive functions. However, her determination and willingness to succeed in her academics led her to finish her undergraduate degree and paved a path for her future success. She proved everyone wrong. Today, she is a distinguished professor and a researcher at Harvard Business School, where she studies nonverbal behavior. 

Reading her story and the field of interest of Ms. Cuddy makes me eager for her talk—I have no doubts that it will meet my expectations by providing more context on her famous research and inspire us to never give up in our dreams no matter how hard life pushes back.

Speakers like Ms. Cuddy are what makes Phi Theta Kappa’s annual convention a truly worthy and intellectually rewarding experience. This year, as we celebrate a hundred years since Phi Theta Kappa’s founding, we will remember those who, through their ideas and passions, changed this society and its members for the better.