Research
The Research Behind the Work
Laura’s keynotes, books, and advising all rest on original research — four connected streams exploring how people find meaning, navigate ambition, recognize potential, and decide to stay.
2
WSJ & Washington Post bestselling books
20 yrs
as a retained executive recruiter
~10,000
research responses across 113 countries
3M+
views of her TEDx talk
DBA
candidate, Babson College
The Four Areas
Four questions, one body of work
Each stream began with a question Laura kept meeting in the field — first as a recruiter, then as a researcher — and grew into a book, a keynote, and a data set. Start wherever your work lives:
Calling & Consonance · Limitless
Work That Matters
What makes work matter to you — and why the alignment between who you are and what you do (consonance) predicts engagement better than any perk.
Explore the research →
Ambition & Wonderhell
The Weight of Ambition
Why success brings as much doubt as joy — and how to thrive in the space between who you were and who you just realized you can become.
Explore the research →
Potential & Intuition · Greatness
Spotting Potential in Others
How great leaders — and great recruiters — see the potential others miss, and the teachable intuition behind it.
Explore the research →
Belonging & Retention · the Limitless Leader Report
Why Your Best People Leave
Why your best people leave even good leaders — and the four things (Calling, Connection, Contribution, Control) that actually make them stay.
Explore the research →
About
Meet Laura Gassner Otting
Laura Gassner Otting is a researcher, keynote speaker, and Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestselling author who helps individuals, leaders, and organizations become limitless. She spent two decades as a retained executive recruiter — interviewing thousands of candidates and advising leaders from the corner office to the Oval Office — before turning the patterns she saw in the field into rigorous research.
Today she pairs that practitioner’s eye with formal study as a DBA candidate at Babson College, grounding every keynote and book in original data rather than anecdote. Her work has reached millions on the TEDx stage and across Good Morning America, the TODAY show, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Oprah Daily.
Credentials
Where the research comes from
Research & academia
A DBA candidate at Babson College, Laura runs a seven-year global study of workplace consonance (~10,000 responses across 113 countries) and IRB-approved research on the role of intuition in hiring.
Bestselling author
Author of Limitless, Wonderhell, and Mission-Driven — a Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller list regular.
Two decades in the field
Twenty years as a retained executive recruiter, stewarding leaders through major moments of career and organizational change — from the corner office to the Oval Office.
On stage & on air
An ABC contributor with a TEDx talk viewed more than 3 million times, featured by Good Morning America, the TODAY show, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Oprah Daily.
Public service
A former White House appointee who helped build AmeriCorps — where her belief that service is a serious strategy first took root.
Work With Laura
Bring the research to your people
Keynotes, executive coaching, and bespoke analysis of your own team’s data — each grounded in the four research streams above.