Paul G. Stoltz

Dr. Stoltz has served as faculty for MIT’s acclaimed entrepreneurship program and for Carnegie Mellon’s distinguished Global Leaders Program, where his AQ and GRIT-related methods and assessments have been used to equip tomorrow’s leaders and entrepreneurs. He also serves on various boards, including the advisory board for DocuSign and several companies focused on earth-rejuvenating technologies.

Harvard Business Review selected Dr. Stoltz to be a member of their prestigious Board of Business Mentors. Harvard Business School has selected and incorporated Dr. Stoltz’s Adversity Quotient® tools and methods into its top-rated MBA and Executive Education programs. It features Dr. Stoltz’s newest work on GRIT in a new video series for Harvard Business Review. Dr. Stoltz has also been a member of Stanford University’s Distinguished Leaders Lecture Series, was selected as the Millennial Thinker for Singapore, “Thought Leader of the Year” in Hong Kong, and is a top-rated international faculty member for the Young Presidents’ Organization.  

He has guest lectured for Princeton, INSEAD, and Cornell and has been a featured blogger and author for both the Harvard Business Review and Psychology Today. Dr. Stoltz has been the founder and CEO of PEAK Learning, Inc., a global research and consulting firm, since 1987, through which he coaches, consults, teaches, and collaborates with top leaders, thinkers, and influencers within a broad range of organizations from start-ups and NGO’s to the Fortune 500 on six continents. 

He is also the founder and managing director of the GRIT Institute and Global Resilience Institute, both worldwide research collaboratives for exploring and advancing the frontiers of human endeavor. Today, GRIT and AQ are the most widely adopted methods of their kind in the world for measurably enhancing one’s resilience, agility, and GRIT—currently in use by industry-leading companies, top institutions, and many governments in 137 countries across six continents.

Dr. Stoltz is frequently featured in the world’s top media. Examples include the major news shows CNN, CNBC, ABC, Sky News, Business News Network, NBC Nightly News, Public Broadcast Service (PBS), and the biggest daytime shows such as the Today Show, and multiple appearances on Oprah. You will also find Dr. Stoltz quoted in the major press worldwide, including Wall Street Journal, Harvard Management Update, Investor’s Business Daily, Yahoo! Finance, Asia 21, Inc., 

Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Singapore Straits Times, The Australian Financial Review, Success Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Boss Magazine, The Drucker Foundation’s prestigious Leader to Leader, and other publications. Dr. Stoltz coaches the U.S. Olympic Team and has served as faculty for MIT’s acclaimed entrepreneurship program and for Carnegie Mellon’s distinguished Global Leaders Program, where his AQ and GRIT-related methods and assessments have been used to equip tomorrow’s leaders and entrepreneurs.

Dr. Stoltz received his bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication and Economics from the University of California and his business, leadership, and social sciences interdisciplinary master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. PEAK Learning’s international headquarters is situated in the coastal mountains of San Luis Obispo, California, where Dr. Stoltz resides with his family, who were honored by USA Today as “America’s Most Creative Family.”