Laura Gassner Otting

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.

She delivers strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and perspective generated by decades of navigating change across the start-up, corporate, nonprofit, and political landscapes. Gassner Otting dares audiences to find their voice, and generate the confidence needed to tackle larger-than-life challenges by helping them to seek new ways of leading, managing, and mentoring others. As Founder and Chief Catalyzing Officer at Limitless Possibility, she empowers leaders to unlock their employees’ engagement to boost productivity and profitability.

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 a full gamut of mission-driven executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. In 2015, Gassner Otting 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.

Since that time, Gassner Otting has appeared regularly on Good Morning America and the TODAY Show, and her writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and HR Magazine. Gassner Otting is the author of “Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life” (2019), which debuted at #2 on the Washington Post bestseller list (right behind Michelle Obama), has been translated into multiple languages, and which Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts chose as one of her Favorite Books of 2019, as well as “Mission-Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose” (2015). Her latest book, “Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should... and What to Do About It,” debuted in April 2023 at #2 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List. 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 six 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, just ask her enduringly patient husband, two almost-grown sons, and troublesome puppy with whom she lives outside of Boston, MA.