Laura Banovic Flessner

Laura Flessner has 17 years of experience in innovation, beginning her career as a packaging engineer at Procter & Gamble. She would move on to become the director of R&D product design for new benefit innovation at Pfizer, leading new business innovation strategy and implementation within Global Wellness. In 2019, she founded several start-ups while at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). In November 2020, she launched Mindtap to coach and train organizations and individuals to lead through innovation by fusing neuroscience with agile innovation principles. She serves as an innovation advisor at Ascend Leadership, where she helps guide the leadership team through innovation processes to identify, experiment, and build value-added leadership programs. Flessner earned her BS from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has since expanded her knowledge and skills through several programs and certificates, including a CORe Business Essentials Certificate (the pre-MBA program at Harvard University).