Amy Edmonson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, where she studies people and organizations seeking to make a positive difference in the world through the work they do. She has pioneered the concept of psychological safety for over twenty years and wan recognized in 2021 as number one on the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers. She also received that organization's Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019 and Talent Award in 2017. In 2019 she was first on HR Magazine's list of the 20 Most Influential International Thinkers in Human Resources.
Amy's research has been published in Harvard Business Review and California Management Review, as well as in academic journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and the Academy of Management Journal. Her most recent priot book, The Fearless Organization (2018), explains psychological safety — what it is, why it matters, and how to build it — and has been translated into fifteen languages. In addition to publishing several books and numerous articles in top academic outlets, Edmondson has written for, or her work has been covered by, media such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Financial Times, Psychology Today, Fast Company, and strategy + business. Her TED Talk on teaming has been viewed more than 3 million times,
Before her academic career, Amy was director of research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked with CEO Larry Wilson to design and implement change programs in large companies. In this role she discovered a passion for understanding how leaders can build organizations as places where people can learn, grow, and contribute to making a better world, In the early 1980s, she was chief engineer for the legendary architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller, who, not incidentally, was a strong advocate of learning from failure. Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University,
She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, George Daley, a physician/scientist intimately familiar with the science of failing well, and relishes all visits from their twentysomething sons.