Grant was born in the township of West Bloomfield, Michigan, on August 13, 1981, to a lawyer father and a teacher mother.[1][2] He grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Grant participated in springboarddiving and aspired to be a professional basketball player growing up.[2] During high school, he was named an All-American in 1999 in diving.[3]
Before pursuing a career in academia, Grant was the advertising director at Let's Go Publications and a professional magician.[7] Grant was hired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to serve as an assistant professor of organizational behavior in 2007.[8] After publishing a series of papers in academic journals, he was hired as an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2009, becoming the school's youngest tenured professor at age 28.[9][10] He was ranked by students the best professor at the university from 2011 to 2017.[11] In 2023, Grant was named by the Thinkers50 as the #2 most influential management thinkers in the world.[12]
Business
Grant is the host of the WorkLife and ReThinking podcasts.[13][14]
In 2017 Grant co-founded (along with University of Michigan professor Wayne Baker and entrepreneur Cheryl Baker) Give and Take, Inc.,[15] a company that makes a software called Givitas, a web-based SaaS platform designed to help organizations implement the principles from his book Give and Take.
