Angela Duckworth is co-founder, chief scientist, and a board member of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics. 

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. 

Prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study and, in 2018, celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has also been a McKinsey management consultant and a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. 

Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Angela's TED talk is among the most-viewed of all time. Her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is a #1 New York Times best seller. She is also co-host, with Stephen Dubner, of the podcast No Stupid Questions.

Angela Duckworth

Avoiding temptations—not willpower—is the best way to exercise self-control.

K-12 educators, we need your perspective to understand how school phone policies can create an environment where students can focus.

Share your perspective → phonesinfocus.org 

#PhonesInFocus #AngelaDuckworth #Education #Teachers #PhonePolicies

Professor at UPenn, author of GRIT, co-host of the podcast No Stupid Questions, co-founder of Character Lab

Over a year ago, I became interested in what the science said on teen mental health and social media. I found there was one particular hole in the scientific literature: cell phone policies.  

Thank you, Maureen Tracey-Mooney and FutureEd at Georgetown. It was great to discuss what we’re learning so far with Phones in Focus and why the work isn't done.

Want to help me fill this urgent research gap? Share www.phonesinfocus.org with a K-12 educator in your life.

I recently had the chance to sit down with Angela Duckworth to talk all things cell phones in schools, and the great research she is doing through Phones in Focus to help schools establish the most effective policies on the use of cell phones in schools. As an education policy nerd and as a parent of a 2nd grader, I found our conversation fascinating (and, dare I say, hopeful?).  

You can read the FutureEd at Georgetown Q&A that came out of our chat here:

Open article: Q&A: Angela Duckworth on Effective School Cell Phone Policies by future-ed.org

Q&A: Angela Duckworth on Effective School Cell Phone Policies

K-12 educators, we want to know what’s happening in your school!

Make your voice heard today → phonesinfocus.org 

#PhonesInFocus #AngelaDuckworth #Education #Teachers #PhonePolicies

EngageRocket

Co-Founder and CEO (Americas)

SkillsFuture Mentor

Mentor

Gallup

Managing Consultant

- Strategy, marketing and business development across 6 markets, 4 practice areas and 3 channels

- Market penetration within target emerging market economies

- Key account management

- Budget and resource planning

- Managing cross-cultural and cross-regional teams

Regional Director

Consultant

Republic of Singapore Navy

Section Head, Naval Operations Department

Naval Combat Officer

Public Service Division

Recipient of the prestigious Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship, awarded to 6-8 applicants among a pool of 10,000+ A-level candidates for strong academic results and leadership qualities.

Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholar

Economist turned entrepreneur. I’ve been studying organizational and human behavior for over 15 years. Privileged to learn from leaders in tech, education, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, and many other industries. 

Still learning every day. 

I have a passion for applying data and tech to help people live their best lives through work, and a vision to transform the future of work with EngageRocket.

Proud father of three lovely children, and a TEDx / DisruptHR speaker on the topic of employee engagement and leadership.

CheeTung (CT) Leong

3 rules I wish I learned before company #1.

I had to start 3 companies and 10 years to figure this out.

Rule 1: Profit from day 1
Not “one day.”
Not “after we scale.”
Day 1.
Cash creates options. Options improve the value customers get.

Customers get more value, business gets more customers. More customers means more cash. And so on.

Rule 2: Stop getting stuck in ops details
I used to call it “being hands-on.”

Glorified as “founder-mode.”
It wasn’t.
It was me hiding in the work I already knew.

It’s important to know the details of your business. But I found that I selfishly enjoyed being the one designing the widget on the dashboard. Or writing killer landing page copy.

Instead of doing the scary work of figuring out how to make Meta ads work as a new channel.
Founders and their business grow when they let go, not when they hover.

Rule 3: Message to ONE ICP
Not “everyone who might be a fit.”
One real group.
One real problem.
One real offer.
It’s shocking how fast growth shows up when your message finally lands.

Biggest lesson for me?

Simple scales. Fancy fails.

Every time.

Founder & GTM Engineer | AI & SaaS | 🎯 Your cold email is broken. I fix that with proven human and tech systems.

As a founder, I learnt this lesson the hard way.

Fancy copy in your outreach means nothing without good data.

Bad signals → bad pipeline.

Most founders pull a list, agonize over the email template, and pray.

But outbound fails upstream, not downstream.

The BAD signals (these are silently killing your campaigns)

Company-level:
No hiring.
No funding.
No GTM movement.
No product updates.
Looks “fine” in Apollo… but the account is dead.

Contact-level:
Wrong title.
Wrong seniority.
Wrong team size.
Wrong segment.
This is how you pitch a “VP” who’s actually an SDR with a fancy title.

The GOOD signals (here’s where your outreach becomes relevant)

Contact-level:
Viewed your profile.
Liked your post.
Engaged with something you wrote.
Warm humans act different from cold ones.

Company-level:
Website traffic spikes.
New job posts.
New leader hired.
Team restructuring.
Active companies create active pipeline.

Here’s the real difference

Company signals show motion.
Contact signals show intent.

Signals → Systems → Actions

Signals = the raw data

Systems = how you clean + route

Actions = the email you send last

Most people start at “Actions.”

That’s why the system breaks.

Mix them wrong = trash.
Mix them right = replies in hours.

Fix the signals,
and the system
and the actions
all snap into place.

What signals have you used that worked?

Your enrichment stack gets your ICP wrong.
Mine does too. And it cost me.

Early on, I trusted everything the tools gave me.

Title? Must be right.
Seniority? Must be right.
Industry? Must be right.
Company type? Must be right.

Then I got replies like this:

“This is a nightmare.”

And honestly?
It was.

Because here’s the part nobody tells you:

Enrichment tools guess.
They fill gaps.
They normalize fields.
They smooth over the messy parts.

And every time they “guess wrong,”
you message the wrong person…
about the wrong problem…
at the wrong time.

Add in fancy AI copy…nightmare.

Here were my biggest mistakes early on:

1. Trusting titles blindly
“VP” on LinkedIn isn’t always VP in reality.
2. Ignoring seniority mismatches
“Head of” could mean 1 person…
or 200.
3. Treating industry labels as facts
Half the “software” companies I targeted were agencies.
4. Assuming email = identity
Wrong email = wrong person.
Obvious… until you get burned by catch-all.

The lesson?

Personalization doesn’t fail because the copy is bad.
It fails because the data is wrong.

Fix upstream.
Verify the ICP.
Validate the identity.
Double-check the role.

Keep personalization simple and relevant to the offer.

Your enrichment stack only tells the truth
if you make it tell the truth.

Simple fix.
Huge lift.

No alternative text description for this image

Most outbound teams don't fail on data quantity.
They fail on data quality.

Everyone pulls lists from Apollo.
From Clay.
From scrapers.

But nobody enriches for context.

Here's the truth:

If you don't know how a company makes money, who they sell to, or who they compete with, your message is dead before it lands.

Same with emails.
One check isn't enough.
Your deliverability dies when 30% of your list bounces.

Here's the enrichment system we use for every client:

1. Company Intelligence → AI Analysis
Business model. Revenue streams. Who they serve.
Who they compete with. What problems they solve.
We feed all of it into AI so our copy hits real pain points.
Not templates. Not guesses. Real understanding.

2. Contact Data → 5-Layer Email Verification
Syntax + format validation?
MX record + domain check?
SMTP verification?
Disposable/role account filter?
Catch-all + deliverability scoring?
We run all five before a single send goes out.

3. Output → Clean, Context-Rich Lists
Every contact has a verified email.
Every company has a custom angle.
No spam traps.
No generic pitches.
No waste.

This turns list-building from a volume game into a precision system.

Higher opens.
Better replies.
Operator-friendly.

If you want the actual workflow we use to enrich companies and contacts like this:

Comment "workflow" below.

Then send me a DM or connection request with "workflow".

(You need to be following and connected before I can send it over. Blame LinkedIn.)

It gives you intelligence your competitors are guessing at.

taplio

The Battle

Angela Duckworth

CheeTung (CT) Leong

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Performance ScoreAngela Duckworth's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Angela Duckworth

CheeTung (CT) Leong

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Angela Duckworth's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAngela Duckworth's LinkedIn Performance