Vanessa Van Edwards

Vanessa Van Edwards is a speaker with Science of People and author of several books. She specializes in science-based people skills.

Her YouTube channel has over 55 million views and her TEDxLondon talk has over 4 million views.

Career
Van Edwards is lead investigator at her human behavior research lab, the Science of People. She conducts original research experiments on popular psychology and communication.

Van Edwards writes monthly columns for Entrepreneur Magazine and The Huffington Post. She is also a monthly guest on morning news show, AM Northwest. She has written for CNN, TIME, Forbes, and Fast Company.

Van Edwards teaches online courses about body language, facial expression, nonverbal communication and lie detection,  all grounded in scientific research. She has also created/instructed some LinkedIn Learning courses, most of which are on first impressions and how to make conversations more meaningful and better.

Van Edwards has conducted a set of experiments on TED talks and presented her research at SXSW in March 2015. Her lab conducted research on the TV show Shark Tank and analyzed hand gestures in presidential inaugural addresses.

Books
Vanessa Van Edwards is the author of the national bestselling book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People (2017).

Her second book Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication released in 2022 and appeared on the bestseller list of The Wall Street Journal.

Van Edwards is the author of the books Human Lie Detection and Body Language 101, Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, and Do I Get My Allowance Before or After I'm Grounded with Plume under her maiden name, Vanessa Van Petten. Her latest book Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication was released in March 2022.

Personal life
Vanessa Van Edwards was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She lived in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. She currently resides in Austin, Texas with her family.