Amanda Ripley

Journalist

About This Expert

Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist for Time, The Atlantic and other magazines. She is the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World–and How They Got That Way, a New York Timesbestseller. Her first book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes–and Why, was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary.

In her books and magazine writing, Amanda explores the gap between public policy and human behavior. How does the brain learn–and how does that compare to what children do in school all day? How do people behave under extreme stress, and how can we do better?

For Time and The Atlantic, she has written cover stories on the primacy of sports in American high schools, the college of the future and the science of motivating children. She has visited schools on four continents and interviewed hundreds of kids, teachers and parents.

Amanda’s work has also appeared in Slate, the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London. Her work has helped Time Magazine win two National Magazine Awards. To discuss her writing, Amanda has appeared on ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX News and NPR. She has spoken at the Pentagon, the Senate, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as conferences on leadership, public policy and education.

Before joining Time as a writer in 2000, Amanda covered the D.C. courts for Washington City Paper and Capitol Hill for Congressional Quarterly. She graduated from Cornell University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she is an Emerson Senior Fellow.