Anand Giridharadas

“Incredibly hopeful. Every now and then, I come across something that makes me think in a completely new way, and this was one of those times.”— Brené Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Daring Greatly, on The Persuaders

Anand Giridharadas is the internationally bestselling author of multiple books, and one of our foremost voices on democracy, overcoming division, and how humans make and resist and grapple with change. In his work—as an author, a journalist, and a regular political analyst for MSNBC—he points us toward real, meaningful change, wider human solidarity, and hope. Whether you’re wrestling with how to improve your society or build a more cohesive team, Anand’s message has never been more crucial.

His newest book, The Persuaders, is a New York Times bestseller that explores how people and movements are changing minds by practicing a new art of persuasion for an age of extremes and refusing to write off those who don’t agree. The lessons Anand took from that research are useful not only in political debates but also in the contexts of our workplaces, campuses, and communities. He shows us how to stand bravely for what you believe in while staying open to other viewpoints; how to distinguish those you can and need to win over from those you can’t and don’t; how to draw out and make use of the complexity of those who disagree with you; how to persuade by trying to displace rather than replace others’ ideas; how to use language more effectively to win others over; how variously to grab attention, provoke, assuage, attract, and pick fights in service of your goal. He draws on the work of activists, organizers, scientists, and others to offer us a new “persuaders playbook”: proven strategies for coming together and making change. The New York Times writes, “While the world seems to counsel despair, The Persuaders is animated by a sense of possibility.”

His previous book Winners Take All, a New York Times and global bestseller, is an award-winning investigation into how the global super-elite uses the appearance of “changing the world” to maintain the status quo that serves them and obscure their role in causing the problems they claim to be solving. Anand demonstrates how structural change is American life, and has inspired audiences around the world with his clarion call for real change and democracy in more than name only. Winners Take All was named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, NPR, and Financial Times and won 1-800-CEO-READ’s Business Book of the Year Award.

Anand is also the author of the books The True American, which anticipated the rise of white rage, and India Calling, as well as a former longtime foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and TIME, and is the publisher of the newsletter The Ink. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Award, and Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, among others. Anand has given the opening keynote at the Obama Foundation Summit and spoken around the world, including at the New Yorker Festival, the Sydney Opera House, and twice on the TED Mainstage.