Book Giveaway: FAN is giving away copies of Situated to randomly selected Zoom attendees. Details on the webinar registration page. We are grateful for the financial support of Compass Health Center for this giveaway.

In her first book, the #1 bestseller Grit, Angela Duckworth, Ph.D. (FAN ’12, ’16), the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that a common denominator of successful strivers is a blend of passion and perseverance. Her new book, Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, springs from her deepening realization that grit, while necessary, is sometimes not enough. How you position yourself to meet a challenge can be crucial.

Duckworth’s research reveals the enormous influence wielded by everything from the objects within arm’s reach to our peers and mentors, and even our zip code. We are often told to make the best of our situation, but it is far better, she argues, to make the situation better first. Highlighting four essential elements of successful situations (peers, mentors, space, and culture), she shows how high performers like Taylor Swift, Michael Phelps, and Jerry Seinfeld create situations that make the most of their grit. Along the way she explores why personality shifts from one situation to the next, how to conquer temptation without willpower, and how the company we keep shapes who we become.

With disarming honesty, Duckworth also shares her own struggles with burnout and in her marriage, and how learning to change her situation, not herself, made all the difference. Whatever you want to achieve, there is a situation that can make the journey easier.

Duckworth is faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and founding faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics. She will be in conversation with Nicholas Epley, Ph.D. (FAN ’26), the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and faculty director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

This event is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.