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Susan Cain

2-Time #1 NYTimes Bestselling Author & Renowned Keynote Speaker

Speaking Fee: $62,500 i Fees vary by event type, travel, and appearance details.

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Susan Cain is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, TED sensation, and leading expert on introversion, sensitivity, and the hidden power of bittersweet emotions. Her groundbreaking work has redefined leadership, creativity, and connection in a noisy world.

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Meet Susan Cain

Susan Cain is a globally recognized author, speaker, and thought leader whose groundbreaking work has reshaped how we understand introversion, sensitivity, and the emotional complexities of life. Her books Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole have topped bestseller lists and sparked a worldwide conversation about the strengths of quiet individuals. With over 50 million views, her TED Talks on introversion and the power of bittersweet emotions rank among the most-watched of all time.

Named the 6th Top Influencer in the World by LinkedIn and one of Watkins’ Most Spiritually Influential Living People, Susan Cain is an in-demand keynote speaker who has captivated audiences at Google, Pixar, the U.S. Treasury, and Harvard. She also hosts A Quiet Life in Seven Steps on Audible and leads The Quiet Life online community, offering practical guidance for those who thrive in thoughtful, introspective spaces.

Whether through her bestselling books, sought-after speaking engagements, or widely read Kindred Letters newsletter, Susan Cain is redefining success, leadership, and connection for introverts and extroverts alike. Susan Cain is available to be booked for corporate and private events. Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group today to inquire about Susan Cain’s fees.

Want to book Susan Cain for an event?

Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group at 215-510-6607 to book Susan Cain for corporate or private events, keynote speeches, workshops, fireside chats, motivational speaking, or virtual appearances. Our agency will work directly with your organization and our keynote speakers to create an unforgettable event.

The Mollie Plotkin Group is the leading keynote speakers agency and entertainment bureau bringing excitement to audiences, clients, and employees. We represent subject-matter experts in every possible field, so whether we’re your partner in creating a memorable meeting, or your meeting planner’s secret weapon in securing the perfect keynote speaker, we’re in this with you.

Biography

The Rise of Quiet Power

Susan Cain’s fascination with introversion and human nature began early in life. Despite growing up in a society that championed boldness and extroversion, she recognized the often-overlooked strengths of deep thinkers, careful listeners, and those who prefer a quieter path to leadership. After earning an honors degree from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard, Susan embarked on a career as a lawyer and negotiations consultant—only to discover that her true passion lay in exploring and sharing the science of personality, emotion, and human connection.

Her first book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, became an instant classic, shifting the cultural narrative around what it means to be an introvert in a society built for extroversion. Named the #1 Best Book of the Year by Fast Company and translated into over 40 languages, Quiet cemented Susan’s place as a leading voice in psychology, leadership, and workplace culture.

The Beauty of Bittersweet

In her follow-up book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, Susan delves into the power of longing, melancholy, and the complex emotions that shape human experience. An Oprah Book Club selection, one of Wall Street Journal’s “best books of the year,” and a New York Times #1 bestseller, Bittersweet explores how embracing sorrow and imperfection can lead to deeper creativity, connection, and fulfillment. Her TED Talk on the subject reveals the hidden strength of sad songs, rainy days, and the longing that fuels our most meaningful moments.

A Global Influence

In addition to her books, Susan Cain co-curates the Next Big Idea Book Club alongside Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Daniel Pink—an initiative that donates all proceeds to children’s literacy programs. Her writing appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

Susan has also received Harvard Law School’s Celebration Award for Thought Leadership, Toastmasters International’s Golden Gavel Award for Communication and Leadership, and recognition as one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts.

Hire Susan Cain

Beyond her work as an author, Susan is a sought-after keynote speaker. She has engaged audiences at Microsoft, Google, the U.S. Treasury, the SEC, Harvard, Yale, and West Point. Her talks challenge conventional leadership wisdom, demonstrating how introverts and deep thinkers can thrive in high-performance environments by harnessing the strengths of quietness, sensitivity, and introspection.

If you’re looking for an engaging, insightful, and transformative speaker, Susan Cain is the perfect choice for your event. Contact the Mollie Plotkin Group today to book Susan Cain for your next keynote, fireside chat, or corporate engagement.

How to Hire Susan Cain

To hire Susan Cain for an event, contact the Mollie Plotkin Group with the proposed event date, location, audience size, event format, and program goals. Susan Cain 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 Susan Cain’s availability, discuss the event details, and get back to you within 48 hours with next steps for securing Susan Cain for your program.

Susan Cain Booking Fee

The cost to book Susan Cain depends on the event date, location, format, audience size, and scope of the appearance. Susan Cain’s speaking fee starts at $62,500, while virtual programs typically start at $40,000. Speaking fees may vary for keynote speeches, workshops, fireside chats, private events, corporate meetings, and virtual programs.

For the most accurate Susan Cain 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.

Speaking Topics & Programs

Quiet Leadership: How to Harness the Strengths of Introverts to Change How We Work, Lead, and Innovate

Sample Sub-Topics

How to Choose & Cultivate Leaders Wisely

What are the unique leadership strengths of introverts and extroverts? We tend to be blinded by charisma when choosing leaders, and introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions. Yet research shows that introverted leaders deliver equal or superior results, depending on the business situation, and that the status quo amounts to a colossal waste of talent. Charismatic leaders may earn more but don’t always deliver better results.

A study by U Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford, of 4,591 CEOs of publicly traded U.S. companies, found that extroverted CEOs run companies with a 2% lower return on assets. Introverted CEOs ran companies that outperformed their peers as a whole.
Jim Collins (author of Good to Great) reviewed the top 11 best-performing companies in the country. At the time of his study, all of them were led by CEOs described as quiet, unassuming, soft-spoken, and even shy.
A study of pizza chains by Wharton professor Adam Grant tracked store profits over multiple months. On average, there was no difference between the profitability of stores led by introverts and extroverts. Additionally, when leading proactive employees, introverted leaders brought in 14 percent higher profits (with passive employees, extroverted leaders were 16 percent more profitable).

How to Best Balance Solitude & Teamwork for Innovation

We live in a cultural moment that Susan calls the New Groupthink, in which we believe that creativity and innovation are produced in teams. There’s plenty of truth in this. But look at the research on the creative power of solitude:

A study of 56 adults found that after spending four days immersed in nature, participants improved their performance on a creative problem-solving task by 50%.
When the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist studied the lives of the most creative people across a variety of fields, they almost always found visionaries who were introverted enough to spend large chunks of time alone.

How and When to Stretch Outside Our Comfort Zones

There’s a fine line between stretching outside our comfort zones and burning out. This applies to extroverts as well as introverts. How should we all walk this line? How can we restore our energy after spending lots of time outside those zones? Psychological literature has concrete answers to these questions that Susan can’t wait to share with your audience.

How to Harness the Best of Everyone’s Ideas

Here’s Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple PC: “Artists work best alone—best outside of corporate environments, best where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has ever been invented by committee.”

In your typical meeting, 3 people do 70% of the talking, according to a study by Kellogg Business School. How can you design and run meetings so you get the best of everyone’s ideas? If you’re an introvert, how can you make your voice and ideas heard? If you’re an extrovert, how can you ensure that you’re hearing from everyone?

We know that brainstorming doesn’t work – a study of over 800 teams showed that individuals are more likely than groups to generate original ideas. So what should you do?

How to Overcome Any Fear

We all have fears, and so do our colleagues, and they dramatically impede our progress in the world. Susan uses the #1 fear of public speaking to illustrate the latest research on fear desensitization, offering practical tips and strategies that can be applied to overcoming any fear.

Featured Client Reviews for Susan Cain

“I’ve never seen so much energy from conference attendees during a presentation – the first session after lunch no less! She had every senior finance executive in the room captivated.” – Ann Marie Gorden, Manager, Corporate Communications, KPMG US

“The moment she stepped onto the WorkHuman stage, she displayed an undeniable range of knowledge, clarity, authenticity, and warmth. Best of all, she was the same in person. No surprise, the feedback from our attendees was off the charts. I cannot recommend Susan highly enough and can’t wait to have her back at Workhuman!” – Kevin Mullins, Vice President of Global Communications, Workhuman

“Susan Cain keynoted at our annual marquee event and was absolutely superb. Polished, relevant, and accessible, she connected with the audience immediately and held them in rapt attention throughout her presentation. Susan was our most popular speaker, and I would recommend her for any engagement. This was one of the best experiences I have had working with a keynote speaker.” – Rachael Feigebaum, SVP, Events Program Producer, The Advertising Research Foundation

“Susan was a delight to work with and an outstanding addition to our agenda. Her talk was inspiring, thought-provoking and energizing, with an impeccable delivery as moving as it was entertaining. Susan’s passion really shines through and is contagious, she is a perfect fit for any forum where the goal is to motivate and inspire.” – Michelle Edge, Co-founder and CCo, Energy Disruptors: UNITE 2018

Books

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.

If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . .

If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . .

If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . .

Then you probably identify with the bittersweet state of mind.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, connection, and transcendence.

Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain, whether from a death or breakup, addiction or illness. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another.

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.

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Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

What are the advantages of being an introvert? They make up at least one-third of the people we know. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, impeccably researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how you see yourself.

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