Cheryl Einhorn
Cheryl’s Journey to Better Decision-Making
Our philosophy that helps you achieve your goals and live your best life.
Cheryl started Decisive in response to individuals and companies asking to use her AREA Method decision-making system.
After creating it initially for herself and her investigative journalism stories to check and challenge biases, she found that many other people also wondered if there was a better way to solve their personal and professional problems.
While Cheryl’s work supporting others began as a true labor of love, helping a neighborhood family with their son’s college selection, a friend who needed to find the right elder care for her aging parents and a radio station looking to expand its business, she suddenly realized it was more than a passion, it is a business -–the business of helping people get to their future better.
Luckily in 2018, the head of the nonprofit Future Project, seeking to help young people find their passion, led Cheryl to meet Emma Trout, then (and still) a Dream Director, helping high school students identify their passions and pursue projects to make those things real. Together, Cheryl and Emma worked to build a bootcamp that trained young people in making their decisions better and have been in cahoots ever since.
Cheryl started out as an investigative journalist, drawn to complicated stories that didn’t have easy answers.
Over two decades, she wrote for places like The New York Times, Barron’s, Foreign Policy, and Harvard Business Review. Her work took her around the world, often into high-stakes situations where she had to make tough calls under pressure. She realized she needed a better way to make decisions—something that helped her slow down, think clearly, and avoid jumping to conclusions.
To help her to manage uncertainty and bias in her reporting and decision-making, Cheryl created the AREA Method. After years of putting the methodology to practice in her own work, she realized that other people could benefit from a system to solve hard problems. By founding Decisive, she committed to helping people make easier, faster, better decisions.
Today, Cheryl helps people around the world tackle the decisions that keep them up at night.
She focuses not just on a single decision, but how we can learn and grow as decision-makers through navigating tough choices. Her clients span nonprofits, large corporations and emerging startups with a bright vision for the future. Beyond that, Cheryl teaches decision-making at Cornell University, both at the business school and at Cornell Tech.
As a life-long educator Cheryl has experience teaching several topics related to decision making. She spent over a decade teaching at Columbia Business School and Columbia Journalism School. She’s also written four books about decision-making, including Problem Solved, which focuses on personal and professional decisions, Investing In Financial Research, focused on investment and financial decisions, Problem Solver, which focuses on how your personal problem-solving style shapes the choices you make, and The Human Edge about Artificial Intelligence and decision-making.
“The best question asker I know” is how her kids think of her. Her curiosity is seemingly endless. She loves to learn whether from books, to podcasts, or a conversation with someone new, Cheryl is eager to experience more of the world around her. If you’re facing a complex decision—or just trying to get better at making them—she’d love to help.
Cheryl's Books
If you want to make better decisions, Cheryl’s got you covered!
In all of the ways you tackle high-stakes decisions, Cheryl’s tools and strategies can help you get to better outcomes.
Her first book, Problem Solved, is for personal and professional decision-making. Her second book, Investing In Financial Research, is a guide to better financial and investment decisions, and her most recent book, Problem Solver, reveals the psychology of decision-making and the five dominant ways people solve problems. Which Problem Solver Profile is yours? Read the book and find out! Her latest book is about harnessing Artificial Intelligence to make good decisions, titled The Human Edge, Smarter Decisions In An AI Driven World.
