Diane Hessan is a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, board director, and nationally recognized expert on the American voter.

Hessan is the founder and chair of C Space (formerly Communispace), which was the first company to leverage social media to help brands get insight and inspiration from their consumers. She led Communispace during 15 years of exponential growth when the company worked with more than 400 corporations across twelve countries. While CEO of Startup Institute, Hessan helped build the company into a force for building great talent in the innovation economy.

From 2016 to 2021, Hessan engaged in an in-depth longitudinal study of the American voter. Ultimately, this study resulted in 55 columns for The Boston Globe and her recently published book, Our Common Ground: Insights from Four Years of Listening to American Voters.

Hessan recently consolidated all her investment and advisory work into Salient Ventures, which helps accelerate the next generation of start-up companies in tech. In that capacity, she has invested in, mentored, and championed over 100 start-ups in the Boston area.

Hessan is also coauthor of the book Customer-Centered Growth: Five Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage, which was a Business Week bestseller and published in 11 languages. She has received many honors, including the Most Admired CEO award and Boston Power 50 award from the Boston Business Journal, Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year, the Northstar Award from Springboard, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year, and a range of “best boss” citations. She was honored as a distinguished entrepreneur at Babson College and received the Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship from Brandeis University. She has received honorary degrees from Bentley University and the New England College of Business. In 2019, Harvard Business School recognized her as its Business and Community Leader of the Year.

Hessan serves on many boards, including Panera, Eastern Bank, Brightcove, Tufts University, Schlesinger Group, MassChallenge, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received her master of business administration from Harvard Business School and her bachelor of arts in economics from Tufts University. She has two grown daughters and is founder of The Sound Bytes, an a cappella group that sings about business.