Cathy Salit is a performance and play activist, executive coach, social entrepreneur, jazz vocalist, improviser – radical humanist.
Since 12 years old, when she dropped out of eighth grade and started a radical, alternative school in an abandoned New York City storefront Cathy has been an outside-of-the-box activist and dreamer. With roots in the psychology of becoming, Cathy relates to human beings as the active, social creators of their lives. Her work underscores the dynamic possibility and complexity of human life and that in any moment we are both who we are, and who we are becoming. Cathy has gone on to break new ground in advancing the application of this approach in corporate settings, grass roots organizations and professional coaching.
For 23 years Cathy led the maverick leadership consulting firm Performance of a Lifetime (POAL). Importing the practices and ideas from the world of theater, improvisation and human development, Cathy and her team developed leaders and client teams from companies such as American Express, IBM, Twitter, UnitedHealth Group, ArcelorMittal, Pfizer, The U.S. Olympics, MasterCard, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and JetBlue.
With an appreciation for the use of theater in business settings, her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, Inc.com, CNN, and NBC.
Her book, Performance Breakthrough: A Radical Approach to Success at Work has drawn praise from a broad array of iconoclasts and influencers such as Sheila Heen, Catherine Bateson, Steven Nachmanovitch, Ken Gergen, Dan Pink, and Susan Cain who writes, “[This] is a must-read for anyone who’s looking to stretch, learn, and become more of who they really are.”
As an executive coach, Cathy works with C-suite leaders and high-potential leaders looking to advance their professional career and leadership capabilities. She consults grassroots activists in social entrepreneurship and practical applications of the psychology of becoming.
Continuing to bring improvisation to diverse settings, Cathy serves on the Advisory Board of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Freestyle Love Supreme Academy. She is on the faculty of the popular “How of Performance Activism” program, hosted by the international center for social therapeutics, the East Side Institute. At the outset of the Covid pandemic, Cathy founded The Global Play Brigade, a growing international community of artists, educators, coaches, and performers who responded to the fear, social isolation, and lack of human connection to provide free play, improvisation, and emotional support workshops to thousands of people in all corners of the globe.
Through her writings, speaking, coaching, instructional design, and grassroots organizing, Cathy is a sought-after mentor to the next generation of change-makers across the world.
Cathy lives in the American revolutionary war era village of Setauket, New York with her trombone-playing life partner and their two ridiculous cats Benny and Belle. Cathy loves making new friends. Join her in creating new performances of life, social change, development, and possibility here.