Biography

A leading expert on emotional fitness, Nataly Kogan is an entrepreneur, bestselling 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!

Nataly 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, Nataly 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 MethodTM – and her signature positive energy!

Nataly 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.

Nataly 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”.

Nataly 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. (Just can ask her husband and daughter, her favorite Awesome Humans.)

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Every Day Moments (Even the Difficult Ones)

Why is the pursuit of happiness so stressful and unfulfilling? Nataly’s own journey from Russian refugee to successful executive and founder and CEO of Happier taught her an important lesson: You can’t wait for everything to be perfect to feel good –you have to learn how to find joy in small everyday moments and to boost your emotional immune system so you can get through tough times with compassion and resilience. In this illuminating and compelling talk, Nataly shares the game-changing strategies and insights from her book and research. She explores how the science behind happiness can be used to improve all aspects of our lives, showing audiences why we should stop saying "I'll be happy when..." and start saying "I'm happy now because..."In a speech that is as informative as it is inspiring, Nataly teaches her audiences that becoming happier is a skill and just like other skills, we can improve it through practice. She shares the Five Core Practices and the science behind them to help audience members build their happier skills and come away with a personal set of daily anchors—small steps they can take every day to experience more joy and greater resilience.

Women at Work: Fire Up the Awesome and Unlock Your True Potential

In this powerful and honest talk, Nataly encourages women to cultivate their true purpose, learn how to deal with fear, and connect to their best self to move from a position of strength to achieve significant growth and fulfillment in their careers, regardless ofthe obstacles. In the wake of #MeToo and #TimesUp, Nataly sheds light on what it takes to build equitable, inclusive work environments where every voice is heard and every person empowered to succeed. Having spent her career in male-dominated industries of venture capital, finance, and technology, Nataly acknowledges the significant challenges women face and the frustrations of trying to meet extremely high personal expectations. In offering frank stories and paradigm shifts in thinking, she reveals practical strategies to help women cultivate a personal sense of well-being and insights into transforming workplace culture. Nataly shows that by connecting to their best self, leaning into fear, and dealing with bias, women can unlock more of their potential to thrive in today’s workplace.

Happier Work: Unlocking the Strategies for a Workplace that Thrives

80% of American employees report being stressed at work and more than 50% say they are close to burnout. Beyond the human costs, this results in more than $400 billion of losses in productivity, missed work, and healthcare costs. But there is room for optimism: Research has shown that empowering employees with simple scientifically-based skills to improve their emotional health and resilience and cultivating a culture of gratitude, kindness, and trust, has a dramatic impact not just on employee well-being but organizations as a whole.

In this captivating and practical talk, Nataly shares techniques to help employees improve their emotional health, increaseresilience, and fuel positive energy and the sense of meaning they find through their work. Highlighting the data-driven research that reveals how employee well-being contributes to an organization’s bottom-line, Nataly illuminates how happier employees make for more innovative, productive and profitable workplaces, and how organizations can put into place practices that allow employees and teams to thrive.

Moving Through Fear: How to Connect to Your Bigger Why So You Can Boost Creativity

Nataly is no stranger to fear and the paralyzing effect it can have. From handling the challenge of being a woman in male-dominated fields, to holding jobs that she was too young and inexperienced for, to starting companies, raising money, failing and succeeding, Nataly has become a black belt in battling fear. In this refreshingly candid and insightful talk, she shares her own inspiring stories of moving through fear as well as specific and science-based strategies for how her audience memberscan do the same. Nataly reveals that while there is no magic pill for not feeling fear, there are ways to move from fear to love, and to find a “bigger why” as a bridge of resilience to get through fear. Nataly empowers her audience to stop trying to be fearless, but rather learn how to remove fear as an obstacle and to find a sense of meaning and purpose, unleashing their creativity in the process. Delivering both actionable advice and eye-opening motivation, Nataly leaves audiences emboldened and prepared to tackle any challenge.

Testimonials

Nataly was the perfect keynote speaker and her ability to connect with our employees – in the room or by video from across the globe – was amazing. Every employee who attended took away a ‘nugget’ that stayed with them long after her session was over.
– Stacey Hoin, CHRO, GE Capital
Nataly was the perfect keynote speaker as we invest in Sleep Number's top performers. As a purpose-driven brand, we strive to always be our best for our customers. Nataly shared tools to be more productive and innovative, while finding more joy everyday.
– Shelly Ibach, CEO, Sleep Number
Nataly’s story inspired our organization and energized our employees. Her enthusiasm was contagious and action provoking - we could have listened to her speak for hours.
– Ann M. Powell, CHRO, Bristol-Myers Squibb
When Nataly speaks about happiness as a skill, you can hear perspectives shifting around the room. Her message is powerful, actionable, and so crucial right now.
– Carolyn Gan, Program Director, Watermark Conference for Women
Nataly’s humor, professionalism, and partnership had a positive impact on our attendees. She moved people and made them think differently – that is no easy feat.
– Cynthia Keeshan, VP of Strategic Events, Ceridian
Nataly brings a rare combination of authenticity and vibrancy to any stage. She showcases a plethora of life-changing insights for leaders and surrounds them with her amazing personal journey. I would highly recommend her to any event or company.
– Kevin Mullins, VP of Global Communications, Workhuman

Booksby Nataly Kogan

The Awesome Human Project

Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments - Even the Difficult Ones

Gratitude Daily

Blog Posts

Celebrating International Men’s Day: Fostering Positive Change and Health

On International Men's Day, we celebrate men’s contributions and tackle the challenges they face through the lens of six defining health pillars.

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Navigating Romantic Relationship Dynamics (Hidden Secrets!)

Explore insights from relationship keynote speaker Dr. John Gray on navigating romantic relationships, evolving roles, and fostering intimacy.

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Forecasting Future Trends with AI and Market Analysis with Andrew Busch

Learn to identify insights on forecasting future trends in AI, economy, and business with futurist keynote speaker Andrew Busch.

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Mindset Coaching That Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

Learn insights on powerful mindset coaching techniques to help you stay motivated and reach your goals with high-performance keynote speaker Emma Doyle

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United in Gratitude and Respect on Veterans Day

On Veterans Day, let's proudly unite in our deep respect for those who served and continue to serve fearlessly and faithfully to protect our freedom.

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Introverts vs Extroverts: How Different Personality Types Build Relationships

Learn how introverts and extroverts approach relationship-building in the workplace, with insights from a top business speaker.

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Blog Posts

 

Celebrating International Men’s Day: Fostering Positive Change and Health

On International Men's Day, we celebrate their contributions and tackle the challenges they face through...

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Navigating Romantic Relationship Dynamics (Hidden Secrets!)

Navigating the Balance of Independence and Intimacy in Relationships https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6UMV6IqJXY&list=PLXTlGHk63lLgbS8LN-PENXDzwMdqWAnOm Why does it sometimes feel...

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Forecasting Future Trends with AI and Market Analysis with Andrew Busch

Learn to identify insights on forecasting future trends in AI, economy, and business with futurist...

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Mindset Coaching That Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

Transform Your Goals into Achievements with Mindset Coaching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8RsZQyMSvI&list=PLXTlGHk63lLgbS8LN-PENXDzwMdqWAnOm Struggling to find the motivation to...

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United in Gratitude and Respect on Veterans Day

Let's be honest. Politics divides us as a nation daily. However, on this Veterans Day,...

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Introverts vs Extroverts: How Different Personality Types Build Relationships

In every workplace, different personality types, from quiet introverts to outgoing extroverts, contribute uniquely to...

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