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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Cassie Holmes

When we treat our time as a precious resource, we gain purpose, motivation, and happier lives.

Expert in behavioral decision-making | Author of Happier Hour | UCLA professor

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Happier Hour with Cassie Holmes

Lavin Exclusive Speaker

How do we increase our creativity, happiness, and ability to pay attention? We never seem to have enough time to do it all, but CASSIE HOLMES says that time isn’t only a challenge—it’s the solution. Cassie—Behavioral Decision Making professor at UCLA and one of the Best 40 Business Professors Under 40—is the bestselling author of Happier Hour, a practical guide to taking control of time and finding fulfillment. It’s a Wall Street Journal bestseller that Amazon named one of their 20 top Business and Leadership books of the year. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, saying, “As thorough as it is practical, this one’s well worth readers’ time.” Cassie will show you why too much free time is as bad as too little, how we can get time-rich instead of time-poor, and actionable strategies for designing a happier week.

“[Happier Hour] has an intellectual heft that puts this a notch above similar volumes, and her presentation remains accessible and remarkably unstuffy throughout.”— Publishers Weekly starred review

Everyone who’s ever expressed frustration at not having enough time to do the things they truly enjoy has probably been met with this response: make time. For Cassie Holmes, renowned expert on time and happiness, it’s not about making time—it’s just protecting the time we already have. An award-winning professor of Marketing and Behavioral Decision-Making at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, Cassie’s research examines how focusing on time (rather than money) increases happiness, how the meaning of happiness changes over the course of one’s lifetime, and how much happiness people enjoy from extraordinary versus ordinary experiences. When we’re able to see our days, weeks, months, years, and careers broken down into the quality of our time, we can use that information to reconstruct our schedules, and lives, based on what we need. “In my empirical pursuit of happiness, I’m just hoping to help people of all ages find a bit more happiness in their lives,” Cassie says.

Cassie’s ground-breaking book Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most is a bright, deeply relatable guide to recharging and the ultimate antidote to overscheduling. Cassie reveals why having too much free time is as unsatisfying as too little (two to five hours each day is best), and how to build days that aren’t just full—but fulfilling. Katy Milkman, bestselling author of How to Change, calls “an absolute gem–useful, evidence-based, and a pleasure to read. Armed with the insights conveyed in Happier Hour, we can all find greater fulfillment in the time we have.”

Cassie’s research has been published in such top-tier academic journals as Psychological Science and the Journal of Consumer Research. Popular accounts of her work have been featured on NPR and appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Scientific American, The Washington Post, and many more. Her research on “giving time” was featured in New York Times Magazine’s “32 Innovations that Will Change Your Tomorrow.” She was called one of the Best 40 Business Professors Under 40 in Poets & Quants, and received the Early Career Award for her distinguished scholarly contributions to her field from both the Association of Consumer Research and the Society of Consumer Psychology. The course she developed and now teaches, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, is among UCLA’s most popular for MBAs and Executive MBAs alike.

Previously, Cassie was a tenured faculty member and award-winning teacher at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and a B.A. from Columbia. She’s also a faculty affiliate with The UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute—an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to the research, education, and practice of kindness.

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Angela Duckworth

Author of Grit, the #1 New York Times Bestseller | Pioneering Researcher on Grit, Perseverance, and the Science of Success

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Creator of The 1619 Project | Executive Producer of the Emmy Award-Winning 1619 Project Hulu Docuseries | MacArthur Genius

Greg Hoffman

Nike's Former Chief Marketing Officer | Author of Emotion by Design

George M. Johnson

New York Times Bestselling Author Of All Boys Aren’t Blue and We Are Not Broken | Emmy Nominee | LGBTQIA+ Activist

Nicholas Thompson

CEO of The Atlantic | Former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED

Speech Topics

Corporate Culture

Happier Hour

Our most precious resource isn’t money—it’s time. We’re allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling time poor —like we never have enough. Since we can’t add more hours to the day, how can we optimally spend the time we do have and feel confident in our decisions—for ourselves and our employees?

Based on her wildly popular MBA class at UCLA, Professor Cassie Holmes will share how to immediately improve your life by changing how you perceive and invest your time. She provides empirically based insights that will help you be more productive, use your time at work more optimally by designing your schedule with purpose, and look back at your career with satisfaction instead of regret.

Through her groundbreaking research, Cassie will teach you how small changes can have an enormous impact—helping you feel less overwhelmed, more present, and happier in your life overall—things that money can’t buy. It all starts by transforming just one hour into a happier hour.