Laura Gassner Otting

Keynote Speaker

Best-selling Author, Wonderhell and Limitless

Author, catalyst, and executive coach Laura Gassner Otting inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo by helping audiences think bigger and accept greater challenges that reach beyond their current, limited scope of belief.

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Laura Gassner Otting'S SPEAKING FEE $25K - $40K

Laura Gassner Otting’s rebellious and entrepreneurial edge has been well-honed over a 25-year career that started when she dropped out of law school to join an unknown southern governor’s presidential campaign and ended up as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, where she helped shape AmeriCorps.

She left a leadership role as the youngest Vice President at a nationally respected search firm when she realized that her boss’s definition of success didn’t align with hers and, instead, founded and ran one of the fastest-growing search firms in the country, partnering with the full gamut of mission-driven executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. In 2015, Laura sold that firm to the team who helped her build it, both because she was hungry for the next chapter and because she held an audacious dream of electing our nation’s first female president. (Whomp whomp.)

Since that time, Laura has appeared regularly on Good Morning America and the TODAY Show, and her writing has been seen in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, HR Magazine. She is the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of three books, including Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should… and What to Do About It, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life, and Mission-Drive: Moving from Profit to Purpose. Her books have been translated into five languages.

Through her own commitment to give back, Laura has helped build a local Montessori school, co-founded a women’s philanthropic initiative, advised a start-up national women’s PAC, grew a citizen-leadership development program, and completed five charity-inspired marathons, projects emblematic of her passions and values. She’s turned on by the audacity of The Big Idea and that larger-than-life goal you just can’t seem to shake. She’s an instigator, a motivator, and a provocateur, and she’s never met a revolution she didn’t like.

Featured Videos

Laura Gassner Otting

Laura Gassner Otting Speaking Reel

Laura Gassner Otting

Laura Gassner Otting on Who Success Works For

Laura Gassner Otting

Laura Gassner Otting on the Burden of Potential

Laura Gassner Otting’s Speech Topics

Invitations, Not Limitations: Embracing Your Wonderhell

After stewarding thousands of leaders through massive moments of a career shift and organizational disruption, Laura knows a thing or two about the emotional rollercoaster of going after everything you’ve ever wanted. This talk was born out of the question, “Why doesn’t success feel better?” In this keynote, Laura explains that success isn’t just an endpoint, but a waypoint, a portal that shows you that you were made for even more… if you choose to embrace your ambition, conquer your fear, and actually learn to enjoy the ride. This talk throws down the gauntlet and dares your audience members to dream even bigger.
Live Limitlessly

Many of us spend our lives pursuing a singular idea of success, one that was created for us by someone else. We give votes to those who shouldn’t even have voices and strive to go faster and faster even as we find ourselves falling further and further behind. We chase gold stars, we check all the boxes, we Lean In – and we still feel incomplete. In this keynote, Laura teaches you how to ignore the rules that created your limits, align your energies and your actions, and do work that really matters so that you can live your best life. Aimed at entrepreneurs and misfits, idealists and dreamers, as well as anyone seeking to align who they are with what they do, this talk lights a fire within that catalyzes energy and excitement toward becoming the change agent needed to maximize impact.
Limitless Sales

Your clients don’t buy your products. They don’t buy your services. They don’t buy your brand. They buy the solution that you provide to the problem that they have. In order to win at the sales game, your audience must connect to why this product, this service, this brand actually matters to them, and be able to communicate that meaning as they build mutually beneficial relationships with your clients. In this talk, based on decades of experience as an entrepreneur and chief rainmaker, Laura breaks down the process of connection… to self, to product, and to sale.
Limitless Leadership

Demographic shifts in the workforce have led to conversations about purpose and meaning that have heretofore never been had. Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers alike are all demanding that their work matter more. And, yet, only one-third of the US workforce reports that they are actively engaged in their work. We are using an outdated scorecard that measures the value of a job – title, money, prestige, among others – without adding in the most important part of the equation: the employee. We know that engaged workers are 22% more productive and profitable for their employers, but what recruits the employee doesn’t retain them. Backed up by a 20-year career in executive search and a three-year research project, comprising nearly 6000 responses from 74 different countries from before, during, and now as we come out of the pandemic, Laura Gassner Otting teaches leaders how to unlock their employees’ engagement to not only make them limitless but make their companies and their profits limitless too.

Works by Laura Gassner Otting

Laura Gassner Otting
Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should… and What to Do About It
Laura Gassner Otting
Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life
Laura Gassner Otting
Mission Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose

Speaker Topics & Types

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