Elisabeth Cardiello had her first business cards at six and first product on shelves at 13. Since she was a child, the power of communication on our ability to lead has been a fascination and theme in her life. Her father, an original mentee of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, had significant health problems, leading to her obsession with the power of the mind and impact of stress on our leadership capacity and ability to communicate effectively.

In college, her fascination with the power of leadership and human performance only deepened, from playing D1 soccer, to pursuing leadership positions that allowed her to facilitate large scale, diverse conferences focused on performance, she was hooked. After Business School, a brief stint on Wall Street left her unfulfilled. Since losing her Dad at the age of 26, she became the breadwinner in her family and was thrown into near impossible negotiations that dragged on for years. She needed a framework to follow in those high stakes conversations and it was then that she unknowingly began creating BRAVE®. She distinctly remembers one of the to start living the legacy she wanted to leave. That was when everything changed…

She’s pursued trainings across the spectrum of human performance that span from positive psychology to high performance leadership under George Kohlreiser to interpersonal neurobiology under Dan Siegel, to becoming a Certified Professional Coach and Crossfit Level 1 trainer.

If Elisabeth’s name seems familiar, you may have seen her coffee company, Caffè Unimatic, featured in the Netflix documentary “Coffee For All.” The heartwarming story chronicled her journey from NY to Italy reconnecting with her late father through the discovery of rare, vintage coffee pots, called the Unimatic. Caffè Unimatic has been delighting the world for over a decade with its Italian-made coffee pots and line of coffee, often referred to as “the smoothest coffee ever.” The company’s mission is to bring Italian values back to the world by bringing the world back to the table, over coffee.

Using coffee as the original talisman to bring people together, she began testing what would become her BRAVE Framework® with leaders. Her first ever BRAVE Conversation brought together 9/11 survivors, first responders, the Muslim community and students to find common ground among them. It was a wild success. Since then, she’s taken BRAVE Conversations virtual, bringing together teams from across the globe to across the hall. One leader that took part post pandemic even said, “if we had 90 minutes with Elisabeth before lockdown, our company, it’s culture and our productivity would be in a better place.” Over the years, Elisabeth has spent over 14,000 hours with leaders at 400+ companies around the world.