Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor is one of the world’s leading experts on happiness, success, and human potential. He is the bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage, Before Happiness, and Big Potential, and his TED talk is among the most popular of all time with over 24 million views. Shawn is also well-known for his keynote and motivational speaking. His signature blend of cutting-edge research, engaging stories, and infectious energy makes him a sought-after speaker for audiences ranging from Fortune 100 companies to public schools. Shawn Achor is available to be booked for corporate and private events. Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group today to inquire about Shawn Achor’s fees.

Want to book Shawn Achor for an event?

Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group at 215-995-0905 to book Shawn Achor for a keynote speech, corporate event, leadership program, workshop, fireside chat, virtual appearance, or other private or professional event.

Our team will help confirm Shawn Achor’s availability, speaking fee, travel requirements, and fit for your audience. To start the booking process, please share your event date, location, audience size, event format, and the type of presentation you are looking for.

The Mollie Plotkin Group is a full-service keynote speaker agency and entertainment bureau that helps organizations secure keynote speakers, entertainers, athletes, celebrities, and thought leaders for corporate meetings, conferences, fundraisers, and special events.

A Harvard-Born Mission

Shawn Achor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and went on to earn a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. He spent 12 years at Harvard, where he pioneered original research in positive psychology and taught one of the university’s most popular courses.

From Harvard to 50 Countries

Determined to test his theories in the real world, Shawn traveled to more than 50 countries—working with students in Soweto, South Africa’s shantytowns, public schools in Flint, Michigan, six battalions of Marines at Camp Pendleton, and doctors and first responders after the Boston Marathon bombing and the Orlando shooting. Across environments both high-performing and high-pressure, he found one consistent truth: happiness is not the result of success—it’s the cause of it.

Changing the Way We Think About Success

Shawn has worked with over a third of the Fortune 100, including Microsoft, American Express, AT&T, and Johnson & Johnson, to reshape how organizations think about success. His research was featured on the cover of Harvard Business Review, and his PBS special has reached millions. With practical, science-backed strategies and unmatched storytelling, Shawn shows how shifting our mindset can lead to extraordinary results.

The Big Idea

Whether addressing government leaders at Camp David or speaking to educators, Shawn’s message is simple but revolutionary: by creating an interconnected approach to success, we shine brighter together. His work continues to prove that optimism, connection, and small behavioral changes can ripple outward—raising performance, deepening engagement, and transforming entire cultures.

To hire Shawn Achor for an event, contact the Mollie Plotkin Group with the proposed event date, location, audience size, event format and program goals. Shawn Achor is available for corporate events, conferences, leadership meetings, private events, workshops, fireside chats and virtual programs.

After receiving your request, a Mollie Plotkin Group booking agent will review Shawn Achor’s availability, discuss the event details and get back to you within 48 hours with next steps for securing Shawn Achor for your program.

The cost to book Shawn Achor depends on the event date, location, format, audience size and scope of the appearance. Speaking fees may vary for keynote speeches, workshops, fireside chats, private events, corporate meetings and virtual programs.

For the most accurate Shawn Achor booking fee, contact the Mollie Plotkin Group with your event details. Our team will help confirm availability, pricing and the best format for your event.

Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being

Until now, we’ve been taught that to be successful, we must better ourselves and rise above others. The pursuit of fulfilling our potential has been individual and isolated. Research shows that this self-focused approach to achievement puts a cap on our happiness and success. It is only by pursuing potential in an interconnected way that we can achieve the heights of our potential in business and education. Only by making others better as we grow, can we see what we are truly capable of. Based on his research, new findings revealing the ripple effect of our actions, and work in 50 countries, Shawn outlines a five-stage strategy for achieving interconnected success and demonstrates how to apply them to your work and home life for greater energy, productivity, and success.

The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance

Most companies and schools follow this formula: if you work harder, you will be more successful, and then you will be happy. This formula is scientifically backward. A decade of research shows that training your brain to be positive at work first actually fuels greater success second. In fact, 75% of our job success is predicted not by intelligence, but by our optimism, social support network, and the ability to manage energy and stress positively. By researching top performers at Harvard, the world’s largest banks, and Fortune 500 companies, Shawn discovered patterns that create a happiness advantage for positive outliers—the highest performers at the company. Based on his book, The Happiness Advantage, Shawn explains what positive psychology is, how much we can change, and practical applications for reaping the Happiness Advantage amid change and challenge.

Positive Genius: The Key to Raising Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change

What is more important than IQ and emotional intelligence combined? Based on the research in Before Happiness, Shawn Achor takes us to the beginning of human potential to explain why some people can make great changes while others remain the same.

Before you can make a change at work or home, your brain first constructs a picture of reality; this mental picture already determines your likelihood of success and your ability to harness your brain’s IQ, emotional and social intelligence. In this exciting talk, Shawn takes the audience to the cutting edge of positive psychology and neuroscience to demonstrate how one can become a “positive genius”: one who can continually architect successful, positive realities based upon facts and then transfer those realities to others.

Using his signature humor, new case studies, and interactive experiments that engage the audience, Shawn makes this research come alive. Shawn illuminates new research he did in collaboration with Yale that shows how a leader can change their mindset about stress to increase productivity by 30% and lower health problems and fatigue by 23%. Audiences leave with five clear, practical takeaways, which can immediately start to transform their life, raising both happiness and success rates. In this program, participants will learn how to navigate multiple realities at work, cancel internal and external noise, add vantage points to planning, use success accelerants to speed goal completion, and use meaning markers to spread positive genius throughout a team, family, and an entire organization.

Positive Leadership: Restoring a Culture of Confidence

Confidence, trust, and job satisfaction are at historic lows. When the economic collapse began, the world’s largest banks called in Shawn Achor to research how to restore confidence and forward progress. While many managers succumb to helplessness, with their teams and clients quickly following suit, Shawn researched those who maintained high levels of success and leadership during the challenge. He found that our brains create confidence based on the belief that our desired outcome depends on our behavior. To develop this belief, we must create “wins” to overcome learned helplessness and train our brains for rational optimism. Based on the science of positive psychology and case studies of working with companies during an economic collapse, Shawn provides practical applications for keeping teams motivated and engaged while raising the belief that their individual behavior matters.

The Ripple Effect: How to Make Positive Change Easier

Common sense is not common action. This is because information does not necessarily cause transformation; we require a certain level of “activation energy” to start a change. Shawn’s research in the field of positive psychology has revealed how changes in our own brains due to mindset and behavior can have a ripple effect on a team and an entire organization.This positive ripple effect can create a more productive, optimistic work culture and make positive change easier.

Audiences will learn about the latest scientific research on mirror neurons and mental priming to explain how positivity and negativity spread, case studies on becoming a lightning rod for change, and findings on how a positive ripple effect profoundly affects an organization’s ability to transition and change.