David Yeager, PhD, is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and the cofounder of the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He is best known for his research conducted with Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, and Greg Walton on short but powerful interventions that influence adolescent behaviors such as motivation, engagement, healthy eating, bullying, stress, mental health, and more.
He has consulted for Google, Microsoft, Disney, and the World Bank, as well as for the White House and the governments in California, Texas, and Norway. His research has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and more.
Clarivate Web of Science ranks Yeager as one of the top 0.1% most-influential psychologists in the world over the past decade. Prior to his career as a scientist, he was a middle school teacher and a basketball coach.
He earned his PhD and MA at Stanford University and his BA and MEd at the University of Notre Dame.
Dr. Cameron Hecht is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Rochester who specializes in designing interventions to promote motivation and human performance. His work is situated at the intersection of psychological theory and real-world application, translating insights from the science of identity, agency, and persuasion into scalable strategies that change how people experience their social environments.
These interventions have demonstrated a major impact on important and difficult-to-change real-world outcomes. For instance, his work to shift teachers’ classroom practices increased student performance in lower-socioeconomic-status schools by approximately 11 percentage points while roughly halving rates of teacher burnout.
Extending his work to address social divides, he developed a psychologically informed media-literacy module that reduced partisan animosity among Americans by over 10 percentage points, tying for first in a global competition of 25 interventions.
Cameron’s current work is focused on improving the motivation and performance of managers and individual contributors in the workplace, a research program that was recently awarded the inaugural Center for Purpose and Performance grand prize in partnership with Dr. Chris Bryan to foster more inclusive and engaging workplace cultures.
