Polly LaBarre

Polly LaBarre is an expert on leading organizational change, a best-selling author, speaker, and thinker, aiding leaders in understanding and creatively reacting to the forces impacting their organizations. She has spent the last two decades helping organizations become more resilient, innovative, and inspiring. Her insights equip leaders at all levels to create significant impact. Her work is fueled by the ambition to shape the future of organizations, work, and collective progress.

LaBarre’s work revolves around three core questions: 1) How can we foster human growth and development? 2) How can we nurture the boldness of imagination required to solve our most complex issues? 3) How can organizations and individuals change their approach to change to become infinitely adaptive? To make genuine progress in these areas, LaBarre studies and collaborates with progressive organizations, develops curriculum, and pioneers experiments for igniting creativity, extending collaboration, and speeding up change.

As a co-founder of the Management Lab (alongside Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini), LaBarre has spent the past decade creating a methodology, platform, and practical tools for building organizational capacity and speeding up change. This pioneering approach to collaborative innovation has been deployed in a range of large-scale experiments in “hacking management” inside influential companies and across a global community of approximately 35,000 management innovators.

LaBarre co-wrote the bestselling book "Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win," which The Economist heralded as a 'Book of the Year' and commended as 'a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great'. She was a founding member and senior editor at Fast Company magazine, where she significantly contributed to the astounding success of a publication that redefined conventional wisdom on working, leading, and winning.

A much-sought-after speaker, moderator, and interviewer, LaBarre has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses around the world and has developed and hosted numerous events. Her writing has been published in esteemed publications, including Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and The Huffington Post. Beyond frequent television appearances on CNBC, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, Good Morning America, and the Today Show, she was also a business and innovation correspondent for CNN, where she produced regular segments on groundbreaking ideas and best practices from the world of business and beyond.

LaBarre is a dedicated gardener, an enthusiastic cook, and a devoted yogi. She also serves on the board of CitySeed, a nonprofit organization committed to creating a fair and healthy food system and economic opportunity in New Haven, CT. A graduate of Yale University, LaBarre resides with her family in New Haven.