Angela Duckworth is the Founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Duckworth has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Prior to her career in research, Duckworth founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2012, celebrated its twentieth anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco and Philadelphia.

Duckworth 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 Ph.D. in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Duckworth has received numerous awards for her contributions to K-12 education, including a Beyond Z Award from the KIPP Foundation. Angela’s TED talk is among the most-viewed of all time. Her first book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, is a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

The Todd Lecture Series is named in honor of US Army retired Major General and Norwich President Emeritus W. Russell Todd ’50 and his late wife, Carol, in gratitude for their dedicated service to Norwich University and the Northfield community. The series is funded by a generous donation from Ellen and John Drew, the Todd’s daughter and son-in-law, and the Drew Foundation. The series aspires to serve not only the Norwich University campus community but also residents of Central Vermont and beyond.