Your Superior Self

Washington Post Best Selling Author and Motivational Keynote speaker, Laura Gassner Otting, inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo because her presentations make listeners think bigger and accept greater 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 the respected nonprofit search firm, Isaacson, Miller, to expand the startup ExecSearches.com. Laura also 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. In 2015, Laura sold NPAG to the team that 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.

Along the way, while serving on Hillary Clinton’s National Finance Committee, she was asked to do a TEDx talk which became so popular that it launched a speaking career. Laura has spoken across the United States and internationally to universities, companies, conferences, accelerators, TEDx, and the US Military.

She is the author of Mission-Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose (2015) and the Washington Post Best Seller Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life (2019). She lives with her husband, two teenage sons, and troublesome puppy outside of Boston, MA.

Check her out here: LGO

Sign up for her course here: www.heyLGO.com/learn 

Kathleen has been an entrepreneur since 2002. Her first company was a QuickBooks consulting service in which she grew to over 6 figures - part-time from home - while raising her two children. Kathleen sold it to one of her remote bookkeepers, then founded The Fearless Group Inc. and became a Certified High-Performance Coach to inspire and coach people to higher levels of success.

Hoby has been completely blind since birth. He is a scientist, food & beverage expert and a passionate explorer and innovator of sensory experiences and sensory-driven design thinking. Hoby is unusually tuned into his surroundings and has frequently chosen to walk the unbeaten paths in life over known territories. In 2016, Hoby earned his PhD from UC Davis in organic chemistry. His fearlessness is infectious, and he has actively paved the way for others to join him in his quest to follow passions both because and despite of any challenges.

In 2011, Hoby founded Accessible Science, a non-profit organization which leads annual chemistry camps for blind or visually impaired students throughout North America. In the same year he began opening doors to the world of wine aromas by holding truly blind wine tastings in Francis Ford Coppola’s wineries. He now conducts these not just in the Sonoma-Napa wine region of California but around the globe. Over the years, Hoby has become a motivational speaker, a mentor and educator. In 2017, Hoby co-founded Senspoint Design. Senspoint Design is now merging with Tucker Creative and others to create SENSPOINT, a full-spectrum design company with a distinct focus on telling stories to create truly memorable experiences using all five senses. In his work, you will find a unique trilogy between sensory awareness, scientific knowledge, and a love for sharing his insights.

Hoby’s numerous initiatives have been recognized by President Barack Obama in 2012 when he was named a Champion of Change for enhancing employment and education opportunities for people with disabilities. In 2016, Hoby was named one of Forbes Media’s 30 under 30 in the food and drink category. Hoby’s initiatives have touched those whose sensory journeys he successfully guided to new levels of awareness and success.

You can reach Hoby here: Hoby's Website

You can email Hoby here: [email protected]

Dr. Loretta Breuning is the Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and author of Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphin levels. As a Professor of Management at California State University, and as a parent, she lost faith in prevailing views of human motivation. Her search for answers led to studies of the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. Suddenly, everything made sense and she began creating resources to help people manage their inner mammal. The Inner Mammal Institute offers videos, books, podcasts, multimedia, and a training program, to help you make peace with your inner mammal. Dr. Breuning's work has been translated into eight languages and is cited in major media. Her latest book is Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness. 

Carol Kline, a five-time New York Times bestselling author, has devoted her career to teaching, writing, and speaking about consciousness and personal growth.

Over the last 30 years, Carol has co-authored more than a dozen books, with some of the world’s top transformational leaders—including Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame, Marci Shimoff, Lisa Nichols, and Gay Hendricks.

Those books include Conscious Luck, Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason, You’ve Got to Read this Book, The Ultimate Dog Lover and The Ultimate Cat Lover, as well as five books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Inspired by her experience writing Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul in 1997, she became deeply involved in animal rescue work. This led her to help run and build an animal shelter called Noah’s Ark Animal Foundation in Fairfield, Iowa.

Today, Carol lives in Ojai, California with her husband, Larry, and their dog, Buddy, and is at work on a number of writing, business, and service projects.

Diane was the first Director of the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution for the Utah Judiciary, where she established mediation programs throughout the court system.

She has mediated a broad range of disputes and transactions including divorces, probate, employment, contracts, and multi-party negotiations. She works with consummate ease in a variety of settings including private industry, governmental agencies and non-profit and of course individuals. She is well known as an innovator in dialogues, especially conversations about culture, religion, race and gender relations.

She is the recipient of several prestigious awards for her work in this area, including the Peter W. Billings Award from the Utah State Bar, the Utah Council on Conflict Resolution Peacekeeper Award, the Judicial Administration Award and Friend of the Court, and most recently, the 2016 Peacemaker Award from the BYU Center for Conflict Resolution.

Diane has been a practitioner of meditation for over 35 years. Diane began her studies at Naropa University in 1983 with Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche, and became a Zen student in 1997. In 2003, she received ordination as a Zen monk with her husband Michael Zimmerman, and received dharma transmission from Genpo Roshi in 2006. For her, Zen practice is a fundamental commitment to experiencing reality as it is — beautiful, ungraspable and seamless.

Diane facilitates Big Mind Big Heart, a process developed to help elicit the insights of Zen in Western audiences. Diane is considered a pioneer in articulating and applying the insights of an Integral Life Practice based on work of Ken Wilber. Since 2004, she has worked with Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute in Denver, Colorado.

In 2008, Diane co-founded Two Arrows Zen, a center for Zen study and practice in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah with her husband Michael Mugaku Zimmerman. She is the Executive Director of Two Arrows Zen and co-founder of the Integral Facilitator, a training program oriented to personal development and advanced facilitator skills.

Diane is the author of Everything is Workable: A Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution, (2013, Shambhala Publications) and The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone (March 2017, Shambhala Publications). Her next book, co-authored with Gabriel Wilson and Kimberly Loh is Compassionate Conversations: How to Speak and Listen from the Heart, in-press with Shambhala Publications and scheduled for release in May, 2020.