John Stackhouse, Senior Vice President, Office of the CEO, RBC, will host a conversation with special guest Angela Duckworth, author of the New York Times best-selling book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive.

Angela is a Professor 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, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Here is why you don’t want to miss this event.

• Next Gen, are you trying to determine your passions or narrow down business focus?

• Have you started thinking about your future?

• Are you considering starting your own business some day?

• Are you looking for a bit of inspiration/motivation or help focusing on a goal?

Context

• Through her research, Angela has found that the combination of passion and perseverance for a singularly important goal is the hallmark of high achievers in every domain. She has also found scientific evidence that grit can grow. In this talk, Angela will present her influential work on grit - the tenacity to pursue long-term goals with perseverance and passion. She will describe the predictive power of grit for performance in a variety of contexts.

Sample Questions

• How do you define grit and how do you recognize it? Can you teach/develop grit? How?

• Why is grit such a powerful predictor of success? Aren't there other factors or qualities that also determine successful career outcomes?

• Can you give us some examples of how grit correlates with success? And perhaps some circumstances where grit doesn't count?

• Are all the best hires gritty? When it comes to investing, for instance, is a gritty employee always the best kind of employee?

• How do you go about assembling a gritty team? What if some members of the team are grittier than others?

We looking forward to having you join us.

Angela’s TED Talk is among the most-viewed of all time.

This virtual event is being hosted on the BrightTALK platform.

• Click on the link to register. If this is your first event, you will need to set up a BrightTALK account, providing your name and email address. Please be sure to set your time zone and email preferences.

• During the registration process, you will have the opportunity to submit questions for Angela in advance of the event.

• You will receive a confirmation email from BrightTALK with a calendar booking and link to attend the event.

The event will be approximately 45 minutes long.

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“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.” ~ Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance