Hi there, I’m Nataly.
Keynote speaker. Bestselling author. Self-taught artist. Former tech CEO.
My life's work is helping people break through their limiting beliefs and create the life and impact they are truly capable of.
I came to the United States at 13 as a refugee from the Soviet Union.
No English. No money. No idea what came next.
What I had was determination — and a very specific plan to lose my accent by watching Alyssa Milano on Who's the Boss and repeating everything she said into a mirror.
Linguistic theory says you can't lose your accent after age 11. I did it anyway. I was very proud of this.
That stubbornness, that refusal to accept limits as permanent, it has defined everything I've built since.
I spent the next two decades building.
After graduating from college I joined McKinsey & Company in New York — smart colleagues, fascinating work, and exposure to ideas I couldn't have imagined growing up in the projects outside Detroit. But eighteen months in, I felt the pull to build things myself.
So I walked away from the prestige and the security. And I never stopped building after that.
Venture capital. Startups. Companies. Products.
I became the youngest and only female Managing Director at a New York venture capital firm at 25.
I co-founded a publishing company (with my husband!) that was later acquired by Penguin.
I built Work It, Mom! into one of the largest online communities for working mothers.
I worked on consumer technology at Microsoft's innovation lab and at a mobile startup acquired by PayPal.
HAPPIER
And then came the idea that would change everything.
I had become fascinated by research on gratitude and its impact on wellbeing. I was skeptical at first. But I tried it. I was desperate to feel better.
It worked. My mindset, energy, and perspective began to shift. I became convinced that small emotional habits could have a profound impact on how we experience our lives.
So with a small and mighty team of awesome humans we built Happier: One of the first gratitude apps, which helped build positive emotional habits and share moments of joy.
It became the most popular gratitude-sharing platform in the world, reaching hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.
From the outside, it looked like the culmination of everything I had been building toward.
From the inside, I was running on adrenaline, pressure, and a quiet terror of stopping.
After two decades of that, everything caught up with me.
I experienced a severe burnout that nearly ended my career. I had to lay off my team, face difficult conversations with investors, and confront something I had been avoiding for years.
People used to call me a powerhouse.
At that point I could hardly function.
That moment forced me to ask questions I had never allowed myself to ask before. Not what should I do next. But what do I actually want? What energizes me? What does it feel like to build from alignment instead of pressure?
For the first time in my life, I let myself explore parts of myself I had ignored for years.
One of them was creativity.
I picked up a paintbrush at 40.
Admitting to myself that I was an artist felt terrifying and liberating at the same time. I had spent decades defining myself by what I built and proved. Painting was something I did simply because it made me feel alive.
And that — that simple act of choosing myself — cracked everything open.
Painting didn't just help me recover from burnout.
It taught me something I now believe is the most important truth about growth:
Reinvention isn't about becoming someone new.
It's about becoming more of who you truly are.
Uncovering dimensions of yourself you've been ignoring. Doing more of what energizes you. Creating the impact only you can have.
That realization reshaped everything — my work, my life, how I think about what it means to grow.
I wrote my first bestselling book, Happier Now, and began sharing the practices behind emotional fitness with audiences around the world.
My second book, The Awesome Human Project, expanded that work — giving people the inner tools to navigate uncertainty and thrive through change.
Over time these ideas evolved into the framework I now teach globally: REINVENT•ABILITY™ — a mindset and action system that helps people grow through change, break through internal limits, and take meaningful action even when the path isn't clear.
Today I deliver keynotes and leadership experiences to help leaders grow through change and create the impact they are truly capable of
I’ve had the gift of working with leading organizations including Google, Disney, Dell, Capital One, and many others.
My work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review.
And I work with leaders, founders, and creators in small, intimate groups and one on one — helping them find their Zone of Greatness, break through what's been holding them back, and build something they are genuinely excited to wake up to.
I am also an artist.
I create bold, colorful, abstract paintings that I exhibit publicly — including at my first international show in Mexico City in 2026.
My art is part of my Dare Yourself™ movement, an invitation to express who you truly are and live more boldly.
Making art changed how I see everything. It is the most honest thing I do.
What drives all of it — the keynotes, the mentorship, the art, the books — is one thing:
I want to help people expand into the fullest expression of who they actually are.
To uncover their unique gifts and dimensions.
To build something with them that lets them share those gifts with the world in a way that genuinely lights them up.
That aliveness. That sense of finally moving toward something true.
That is what I live to create with people.
And if you are here because something in you is ready for that — I am glad you found this page.
YOUR DAILY DOSE OF INSPIRATION
