Maria Konnikova’s Speech Topics:
Maria Konnikova speaks about a range of subjects involving decision making, creativity, learning, and the psychology behind everyday life. She has given dozens of keynotes around the world; been a featured speaker at conferences like the World Economic Forum at Davos, TEDNYC and TEDx, and SXSW; led corporate retreats and annual meetings; and taught the key skills of optimal decision making to groups of all ages. Before any talk, Maria will work closely with the event organizers to determine what approach would be best for their target audience. She will customize her presentation, messaging, interactive components, and relevant examples to suit the needs of every audience. No two talks are ever the same, though all do draw on a combination of psychological research (much of it Maria’s own), real life examples, Maria’s personal experiences at the poker table and in the world of confidence artists, and Maria’s extensive background in journalism.
In addition to giving talks, Maria can supplement her appearance with personalized workshops for your audience. Over the last several years, Maria has developed interactive decision making workshops that use poker as a tool to explore the mind and help participants emerge with a roadmap for improving their thought processes going forward. (All, hopefully, while having some fun and learning some poker strategy!) She has successfully run these workshops everywhere from corporate retreats in Colorado to school classrooms to neuroscience meetings and investment conferences in New York City. Each workshop is customized.
If you have time, listen to her entire keynote at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, or dive into her WEF conversation with Nobel-winning economist Robert Shiller on risk perception.
Some speech topics include:
- Persuasion, Trust, Confidence: What Your Business Can Learn from Con Artists
- Better Decision Making Through Poker
- Self-Control, and Emotion Management: Lessons from Psychology and Poker
- How The Mind Learns: Lessons from Psychology and Poker
- Mastering the Art of Probabilistic Thinking
- The Power of Storytelling
- How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes: The Scientific Method of the Mind
- Mindfulness for Daily Decision Making
- How to Enhance Your Creativity in any Environment
- How We Can Learn to Become More Resilient
- How to Be Bored: Boredom as an Antidote in the Age of Distraction
Maria Konnikova’s Bio:
Maria was born in Moscow, Russia and came to the United States when she was four years old. Her first ever book was written in Russian. It was five pages long and had something to do with trolls. When Maria was in fourth grade, she wrote a play. It took what felt like years to complete and all of fifteen minutes to perform. The audience (of proud parents and siblings) raved. Maria cried when she realized that the sounds she kept hearing were not tears but suppressed—and then not so suppressed—laughter at the dead king who couldn’t stop wriggling as he lay on top of the two chairs that were supposed to symbolize his tomb. You know how the story ends. The chairs slid apart. The deceased monarch crashed to the floor. The room erupted. It was not how Maria had envisioned her first theatrical production.
Maria is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, The Confidence Game (Viking/Penguin 2016) and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking/Penguin, 2013). Her new book, The Biggest Bluff, about the balance of skill and chance in life, will be out from Penguin Press on June 23, 2020. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and is the host of the longform storytelling podcast from Panoply, The Grift, about con artists and the lives they ruin. Her podcasting work earned her a National Magazine Award nomination in 2019. Her first book, Mastermind, has been translated into nineteen languages. It was nominated for the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best Non-fiction and was a Goodreads People’s Choice Semifinalist for 2013. The Confidence Game was awarded the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. While researching her latest book, Maria became an international poker champion and the winner of over $300,000 in tournament earnings–and inadvertently turned into a professional poker player. She is currently a visiting fellow at NYU’s School of Journalism.
Maria’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, California Sunday, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American MIND, WIRED, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. Her writing has also been included in the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 anthology and has won numerous awards, including the 2019 Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Maria formerly wrote the “Literally Psyched” column for Scientific American and the popular psychology blog “Artful Choice” for Big Think. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University. She previously worked as a producer for the Charlie Rose show on PBS. She still, on occasion, writes in Russian. She no longer writes plays.
