YOUniversity with Laura Gassner Otting

Invitations, Not Limitations: Embracing Your Wonderhell

After stewarding thousands of leaders through massive moments of career shift and organizational disruption, Laura Gassner Otting (LGO) knows a thing or two about the emotional rollercoaster of going after everything you’ve ever wanted. This talk was born out of the question, “Why doesn’t success feel better?”

Each new level brings a new devil. Anxiety, exhaustion, uncertainty, fear, and burnout are little bugaboos just waiting to waylay your team and sideline your growth.

In this keynote, Laura will show you that success isn’t just an endpoint, but a waypoint, a portal that shows you that you were made for even more… if you choose to embrace your ambition, conquer your fear, and actually learn to enjoy the ride. This talk will throw down the gauntlet and dare you to dream even bigger.

Laura will take you on a trip to Wonderhell and offer a roadmap to creating the mindset that lets you move forward in life, even when your successes tell you to stop right there.

Building on ideas and research from her book, LGO will share with you how Wonderhell will:

Expand your boundaries by getting to know—right now—the version of you that will exist after your success (which will likely be quite different than who you are right now)

Invite you to dive into your discomfort by learning to master the various emotions that are not just a part of the process but a sign that you are on the right track

Urge you to embrace your potential by recognizing that accepting success as a finite destination means that there is a finite limit to your growth and that what truly awaits you on the other side of this Wonderhell is the next one, and the next one, and the next one after that… if you’re lucky.

BONUS: All attendees will receive a copy of LGO’s book, Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn’t Feel Like It Should . . . and What to Do About It (a $27 value)

More About Laura Gassner Otting

A frequent contributor to Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, Harvard Business Review, and Oprah Daily, Laura’s 30-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 national search firm to expand a tech start-up; and founded, ran, and sold her own global search firm, partnering with the full gamut of mission driven corporate and nonprofit executives.

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 the full gamut of mission-driven executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. In 2015, Laura sold that firm to the team who helped her build it.

Laura 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 Arabic, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, and German, 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).

Laura is 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, motivator, and provocateur, and she’s never met a revolution she didn’t like. Just ask her enduringly patient husband, two almost-grown sons, and two troublesome pups with whom she lives outside of Boston, MA.