Kathleen A. O'Grady, MCC

Kathleen A. O'Grady, MCC, grew up just outside New York City. As a kid she tagged along with her dad to NBC at 30 Rock, where she was young enough to slip past security and watch the cast of Saturday Night Live rehearse.

Her first big job out of college was as the right hand to billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio. She lived the plot of The Devil Wears Prada two years before the movie came out.

In her late 20s she leapt from executive assistant to executive coach. She started her company during the 2008 financial crisis and has spent the two decades since working with C‑suite leaders across industries and continents. Along the way she pushed her field toward higher standards and built her own globally accredited leadership certification, which she ran for 15 years.

All of it led to her book, Authentic Intelligence: The Third Domain of Human Awareness, which explores how we know what's real in a world that keeps telling us otherwise.