Join us for the Pruitt Center Fall 2026 Virtual Speaker, Shawn Achor!

Conventional wisdom holds that success is determined by talent, intelligence or the circumstances we happen to land in. After more than a decade of research at Harvard and work in 51 countries, Shawn Achor found that the greatest predictor of our future success is something else entirely: the set of beliefs we hold about the world around us.

Beliefs are not passive. They shape what we notice, how we interpret setbacks, how much energy and persistence we bring to hard problems and whether we see a challenge as fixed or changeable. And because beliefs spread through teams the same way emotions do, a single person’s belief about what is possible can raise—or quietly cap—the ceiling for an entire organization.

In his newest book, The Power of Beliefs, Shawn demonstrates that these beliefs are far more malleable than we assume, and that changing them is one of the fastest levers we have for changing performance. In his talk, Shawn uses research and case studies to show practical ways individuals and teams can surface the beliefs limiting them, reframe challenges as changeable, expand what they believe is possible and sustain those shifts under pressure.

Register here for this virtual event.

Shawn Achor is the NYTimes bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and The Power of Beliefs. Shawn graduated magna cum laudefrom Harvard and earned a Masters from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. After spending 12 years at Harvard, Shawn traveled to 50 countries studying how to create an interconnected approach to potential and happiness.