Hi.
I'm Attia
MISSION
I never planned to make negotiation my life's work. Then I walked into MIT and everything changed.
I saw something I'd never seen before — that you can get more of what you want not by pushing harder, but by understanding what the other person actually needs. That you can be warm, human, and collaborative AND still advocate powerfully for yourself. That influence isn't a personality trait. It's a skill. And every single person can learn it.
That idea lit a fire in me that hasn't gone out since.
Vision
Everyone has more power than they think. The gap between the life you have and the life you want is almost always a negotiation — and most people have never been taught how to have it. That's what I'm here to change.
Whether you're negotiating a salary, a difficult relationship, a career pivot, or just trying to be heard in a room — I'll give you the tools, the language, and the confidence to stop settling and start getting what you deserve.
EXPERIENCE
I've taught negotiation and conflict resolution at MIT Sloan, the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and the Ford School of Public Policy. I've consulted for Fortune 500 companies, Silicon Valley startups, government agencies, nonprofits, and family businesses on multiple continents. I've worked with the U.S. State Department mediating conflict in Colombia's coca-growing regions — some of the highest-stakes, most human negotiations you can imagine.
And I wrote Never Settle — published by Simon & Schuster and endorsed by Robert Cialdini, Daniel Pink, Chris Voss, and Eric Barker — because I wanted to put everything I've learned into the hands of anyone who's ever walked away from a conversation thinking: I should have asked for more.
LIFE
I live in northern Michigan with my husband and son, whose family has been farming cherries and apples on the Old Mission Peninsula for seven generations. They keep me grounded (literally).
I've negotiated in boardrooms, conflict zones, and college classrooms. The one opponent I still haven't cracked? The Michigan weather. And my two year old son. They have yet to cooperate.