Kelly Fitzsimmons
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Laura Gassner Otting Former Executive Recruiter, Performance Researcher, Author
Laura Gassner Otting studies what allows people to become more than they — and the people leading them —thought possible.
For more than three decades, her work has explored the lifecycle of human potential: how leaders recognize potential before it becomes obvious, create the conditions in which people thrive, and sustain growth after success changes the stakes.
In short, most leaders are trained only to spot pastperformance. Laura studies the patterns that predict future potential.
Her research spans more than 10,000 survey responses across 113 countries, 100+ in-depth interviews with high achievers, as well as twenty years in executive search, where she saw firsthand the cost of getting talent, motivation, and success wrong.
That work now follows three interconnected lines of inquiry. Greatness examines the patterns that predict potential and how experienced leaders learn to spot and stoke it. Consonance, the research behind Limitless, explores why traditional markers of success stop motivating us and what actually drives engagement, belonging, purpose, and performance. Wonderhell investigates the emotional weight of ambition — why each new success can bring doubt, uncertainty, impostor syndrome, and burnout along with opportunity — and what allows high achievers to sustain growth through it.
Laura translates this research into bestselling books, keynotes, and executive conversations that challenge leaders to rethink how they identify talent, motivate people, and build organizations where both people and performance can flourish.
A Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Wonderhell, Limitless, and Mission-Driven, Laura is an ABC News Contributor whose insights have been featured on Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, Harvard Business Review, and Oprah Daily. Her “Why Doesn’t Success Bring Happiness?” has been viewed more than three million times on TED.com.
Before turning to research, writing, and speaking, Laura spent twenty years in executive search, ultimately founding, scaling, and selling a global search firm. She began her career as a Presidential Appointee in the Clinton White House, where she helped launch AmeriCorps.
Across all of it, one question has remained constant:
How do people become more than they believed they could be — and how do leaders create the conditions for that to happen?