Jim Harter, Ph.D., is chief scientist for Gallup's workplace management and wellbeing practices. He is coauthor of Wall Street Journal bestsellers Culture Shock, released in 2023, and Wellbeing at Work, released in 2021, a book that explores how to build resilient and thriving teams in organizations. He is also coauthor of the No. 1 Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, It’s the Manager, released in 2019, as well as the New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, an exploration of the 12 crucial elements for creating and harnessing employee engagement. 

Jim’s book, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, is based on a global study of what differentiates people who are thriving from those who are not. His research is featured in First, Break All the Rules, and he contributed the foreword to Gallup's updated edition of this groundbreaking bestseller.

Jim is the primary researcher and author of the first large-scale, multi-organization study to investigate the relationships between work-unit employee engagement and business results. Updated periodically, this study currently covers 183,806 business units and includes 3.4 million employees in 347 organizations, across 53 industries and in 90 countries. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Economist, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Time Magazine, and in academic articles and book chapters.

Jim received his doctorate in psychological and cultural studies in quantitative and qualitative methods from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).