Laura Gassner Otting

As a professional motivational keynote speaker and Wall Street Journal best selling author, Laura Gassner Otting helps innovators, idealists, and iconoclasts get “unstuck” in their thinking - and achieve extraordinary results. She is turned on by the audacity of The Big Idea and that larger-than-life goal you just can’t seem to shake. She is an instigator, a motivator, and a provocateur, and she has never met a revolution she didn’t like.

Laura inspires audiences to push past the doubt and indecision that consign great ideas to limbo. Her motivational presentations encourage professionals to think bigger and accept greater challenges beyond their current limited scope of belief. She delivers strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and catalytic perspective informed by decades of navigating change across the start-up, nonprofit, political, and philanthropic landscapes. Laura dares listeners to identify their voice, and generate the confidence necessary to tackle bigger-than-life challenges while exploring innovative ways of leading, managing, and mentoring others.

Laura’s 25-year resume is defined by her entrepreneurial edge. She served as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, helping shape AmeriCorps; left a leadership role at respected nonprofit search firm, Isaacson, Miller, to expand the startup ExecSearches.com. She founded and ran the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, which partnered with the full gamut of mission-driven nonprofit executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. She is the author of "Mission-Driven," a book for those moving from profit to purpose.