Business Luncheon

The Best Selling Author, Ashley Merryman, will speak about gender differences in competitiveness. She will be reviewing her newest book Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing. In Top Dog, she explores the hidden factors at work during every competition and high stress performance – in a variety of settings - from Anson Dorrance teaching competitiveness the girls of UNC - leading to them the Olympics and World Cup – to why more women still won't run for Congress, but they're (secretly) stars on Wall Street. 

She will look at gender differences in competitiveness – separating fact from fiction. She looks at how structural factors – such as home field advantage, prize structure, and ability grouping – change competitors' motivation to compete. She examines the neuroscience of mistakes and genetics behind stress responses  – how testosterone is the biochemical of motivation, as relevant during a speech as it is in a soccer championship. She address the particular challenges facing teams, and how competitions are a training ground for both moral behavior and innovation. And of course she looks at the development of competitive spirit - how family background, academic settings, and extracurricular opportunities shape our desire to succeed. 

The goal of Top Dog isn't to prescribe one particular way to win. Instead, it's to help each one of us identify our competitive style and use the science to better perform. 

An adaptation of Top Dog recently appeared in the New York Times magazine, while the book's been featured in Wired, The New York Post, the Los Angeles Times and many others;  I have recently appeared on Tavis Smiley, Fox & Friends, CNN Midday, NPR's On Point and Tell Me More, and dozens of other television and radio shows across the nation.

Additionally, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble chose as one of the Best Books of the Month, while she's received some phenomenal reviews including those in Inc, the AV Club, Kirkus, and this one from the San Francisco Chronicle: 

"Coaches and trainers will no doubt sprint to get their hands on Ashley Merryman's remarkable new book . . . . “