Leanne Butterworth

Leanne Butterworth is a passionate advocate for healthy empathy and its power to empower leaders and deepen connections. Leanne is an empathy educator, author, TEDx speaker, and founder of Empathy First. She has shared her expertise across Australia, the USA, Canada, South-East Asia and Slovakia, helping leaders and teams see empathy as a superpower, not a weakness. Leanne is an empathy realist—she knows that empathy can be overwhelming if not practiced in a healthy way and that healthy empathy isn’t about being soft or fixing everything, but about truly seeing and valuing others. As a recovering perfectionist, she embraces progress over perfection, helping leaders build confidence, connection, and compassion through practical, actionable empathy skills. Her mission is simple but powerful: to demystify empathy and show that when practiced well, it creates stronger leaders, teams, and communities