Experience Points

Laura Gassner Otting inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep resigning ideas to limbo. Her presentations inspire listeners to think bigger and accept challenges that reach beyond their limited scope of belief. She delivers strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and perspective generated by decades of navigating change across the start-up, nonprofit, political, as well as philanthropic landscapes. Laura dares listeners to find their voice, and generate the confidence needed to tackle larger-than-life challenges. She leads them to seek new ways of leading, managing and mentoring others.

Laura’s entrepreneurial edge has been well-honed over a 25-year career that started as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, where she helped shape AmeriCorps. She left a leadership role at a nationally respected nonprofit leadership firm to expand a tech startup. Laura then founded and ran a mission-driven executive search firm that partnered with the full gamut of mission-driven nonprofit executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. In 2015, she sold that firm to the team that helped her build it and gave a TEDx talk which became so popular that it launched a speaking career. She is the author of the Washington Post bestseller Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life, as well as Mission Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose and the Kaplan reference book, Change Your Career: Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector.