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Nataly Kogan        

Happiness Expert, Venture Capitalist & Successful Tech Entrepreneur; Co-Founder of Happier

A leading expert on emotional fitness, Nataly Kogan is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and keynote speaker on a mission to help millions of people embrace their Awesome Human, struggle less, and thrive more in work and life! Kogan immigrated to the US as a refugee from the former Soviet Union when she was 13 years old. Starting her American life in the projects and on welfare, she learned English by watching “Who’s the Boss?” on repeat.

She went on to reach the highest levels of success at McKinsey and Microsoft, as a Managing Director at a venture capital fund, and as founder or executive at 5 startups and tech companies. But after years of chasing a non-existent state of nirvana, Kogan suffered a debilitating burnout that led her to find a new way to live and work.

Today, she helps Awesome Humans break free from daily burnout, unleash their full human potential, and experience more joy and meaning by sharing her unboring science-backed Happier Method™ – and her signature positive energy! Kogan is a sought-after international keynote speaker and has appeared in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, TEDx Boston, and SXSW.

She is the founder of Happier, Inc, and has worked with hundreds of top companies, teams, and leaders through her Happier @ Work and leadership programs. Kogan is the author of "HAPPIER NOW," "GRATITUDE DAILY," and "THE AWESOME HUMAN PROJECT" and hosts the Awesome Human Podcast that people call their “best-self hour”.

Kogan began painting when she turned 40 and is a self-taught abstract artist. She loves bright colors, overuses the word “awesome”, and is the funniest person in her family.

Speech Topics


The Case for Compassionate Leadership: How leading with compassion will help bring out the best in you and everyone you lead.

In this powerful, inspiring, and practical talk, Nataly Kogan challenges leaders to stop thinking of compassion as the opposite of focusing on performance and start embracing what research has proven: Leading with compassion makes you a more effective and trusted leader and helps the people you lead bring their best to work.

Nataly goes further, using research and powerful personal stories from her 20-years as a leader to highlight why practicing self-compassion is a non-negotiable first step toward compassionate leadership. She shares mindset shifts and science-backed practices to help leaders put compassion into action and realistically weave it into the fabric of their daily interactions with their teams to create a culture of emotional openness, psychological trust, and kindness.

The Science of Gratitude: Cultivate a human-centered culture of gratitude to boost engagement and performance.

An overwhelming amount of research has shown that cultivating a culture of gratitude, kindness, and trust has a dramatic positive impact on productivity, creativity, innovation, resilience, and ultimately, on the performance of an organization as a whole.

Nataly has helped hundreds of thousands of people and companies develop a daily gratitude practice with transformational results. In this practical and inspiring talk, Nataly shares mindset shifts, hard-hitting research, and easy-to-implement practices that employees and teams can do in only minutes a day to help them improve their emotional fitness, increase resilience, and derive fulfillment from their contribution at work.

Resilience Through Change: Science and skills to help you navigate change with less fear and greater resilience.

Change is constant in our modern work environment and with it comes stress, overwhelm, and fear of uncertainty, which negatively impacts your ability to be at your best. The great news is that there are skills you can learn and practice to optimize your mindset and strengthen your ability to positively adapt to change—and help your colleagues to do the same.

In this powerful talk, Nataly shares hard-fought personal lessons from her journey of coming to America as a refugee, overcoming many challenges, and managing constant change on her way to achieving career success as a business executive, leader, and entrepreneur.

Using the science-backed Happier Method™ and armed with research in neuroscience and psychology, Nataly shares emotional fitness skills and simple practices you can use right away boldly embrace change, reduce stress, and actually grow and flourish during change and adversity.

Elevating Women Leaders: How women can connect to their best selves, lean into fear, and unlock their true potential!

In this powerful and honest talk, Nataly encourages women to cultivate their true purpose, avoid the trap of perfection, and tap into their best self to lead from an authentic place of strength, regardless of the obstacles.

Having spent her career in male-dominated industries of venture capital, finance, and technology, Nataly offers frank personal stories with vulnerability and humor, while acknowledging the significant challenges women face in the workplace. She reveals powerful mindset shifts and practical strategies to help women cultivate a personal sense of well-being, achieve sustainable success, and unlock their full leadership potential to thrive.

Happiness is a Skill: Strengthen your happiness skills with science-backed practices for more joy and greater resilience!

In this vulnerable and practical talk, nationally recognized emotional fitness expert Nataly Kogan shares her lifelong struggle of searching for the elusive “big happy” through achievements and how she finally made the essential mindset shifts that allowed her to live with more self-compassion, joy, and meaning.

Nataly redefines happiness as a skill that anyone can cultivate and using her science-backed Happier Method™, shares simple yet transformative skills and practices — used by more than one million people! — to help you experience more joy in everyday moments and greater resilience when times get tough.

Leading Through Adversity: Practical emotional fitness skills to help you struggle less and optimize your team’s capacity to thrive.

To lead means to positively impact other people’s capacity to thrive, which is not possible unless you prioritize your own capacity to thrive. During times of extreme uncertainty and change, this poses an even greater challenge.

In this practical and inspiring session, Nataly Kogan shares her personal story of success and burnout as a leader, and gives straight talk to activate leaders to make emotional fitness their top priority, so they can struggle less and have more emotional and mental energy to bring to the work and people they lead. She highlights convincing scientific research on the direct link between emotional fitness and resilience, performance, and the ability to lead through challenges.

Leaders walk away with tangible practices they can immediately use to strengthen their own emotional fitness and leadership skills and practices and rituals for their teams, to help boost well-being, resilience, and performance.

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Emotional Health @ Work During Challenge And Uncertainty: How to strengthen your emotional fitness skills during difficult times.

Using the science-backed Happier Method™ and armed with research in neuroscience and psychology, Nataly shares the skills and practices to help employees and leaders reduce stress, feel uplifted, boost their resilience, and foster a greater sense of connection with their colleagues (including when working remotely).

In this inspiring and practical talk, Nataly reveals powerful personal lessons from her journey of coming to America as a refugee and achieving meteoric success that eventually led her to burnout. Engaging the minds and the hearts of participants with her vulnerability, warmth, and humor, Nataly shares insights about the human brain and simple yet transformative mindset shifts to struggle less and thrive more, even during challenges.

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