“I used to joke that for $10 and 100 resumes, Dartmouth career services could get you a job in consulting or banking, so I said, ‘Okay, sign me up.’ I wound up at McKinsey and hated it, but what I observed about human behavior was fascinating. I was good at the things that fall under the umbrella of organizational psychology, which made me want to study it.”

“At Dartmouth, it was the psychological aspects of any course I took outside my majors of math and economics that appealed to me most. [Econ prof] Andrew Samwick was a huge influence. Once I discovered something I wanted to be an expert in, I wanted to teach it and have the influence on students that he had on me.” 

“I tell my students that the best job is a job you love. The second best is one you hate. Only when you hate something do you determine what it is you hate about it, how you’re going to get yourself out of it, and how you’ll pick better next time.” 

“The business landscape has seen big changes in recent decades, but human behavior has not changed. Students I talk to live very different lives than I did in college, but they’re worried about the same work challenges: Can I advance? Can I fit in? Can I find career satisfaction?” 

“A lot of students come to me thinking that everybody but them has life figured out. I suggest they talk more to each other instead of coming to me privately to confess how clueless they are.” 

“The most valuable advice I ever received was from my graduate advisor, who told me the world runs on reciprocity. For me, it’s meant trying to figure out, from day one, how I can add value in a business relationship. We can only withdraw from our accounts what we have invested.” 

“If people are going to think something bad about you, let them come to that judgment on their own. I learned a valuable lesson from watching old Julia Child shows: ‘Never apologize for the food you serve. Only you know how it was supposed to turn out.’ That has brought me a lot of peace after teaching a class or delivering a speech I’ve thought I could have done better.” 

“People are more alike than they think they are. Every single one of us needs to get stuff done by others, so it’s important to understand commonalities we can draw on.”

“What motivates me is wanting people to do better.”

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS 

Author of Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve (Doubleday, September 2024), which advises women how to gain status and wield power in the workplace while remaining warm and relatable; consults and speaks to audiences across industries; her research has appeared in leading psychological journals and national newspapers

Professor at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School since 2004; teaches courses on negotiation and leadership; earned Ph.D. in organizational psychology at Stanford; lives in Chicago with her husband and their three children