Barbara Ann Corcoran

 Barbara Ann Corcoran (born March 10 1949) is an American businesswoman, investor, speaker, consultant writer, syndicated columnist, author, and television personality. She founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate brokerage in New York City, which she sold to NRT for $66 million in 2001. She shortly after, she left the company. Corcoran was among the original Shark Tank investors. She was a regular on every episode of ABC's Shark Tank. Since February of 2020, she's signed 53 deals on the show, with the biggest being a $350,000 investment for 40 percent of Coverplay. Corcoran is the second child of 10 from a family of Irish Catholics who worked hard, was born in Edgewater in New Jersey. Florence Corcoran was Florence's mother and a homemaker. Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., her father, was constantly switching jobs throughout Corcoran's entire life. Her family sometimes relied on free food delivery from a local grocery store. Corcoran recalls her father as someone who was drunk occasionally and did not treat her mother with respect. Corcoran was struggling at school and discovered later that she was dyslexic. She attended the local Catholic elementary school before beginning the high school system at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood. Corcoran was absent from several classes in her first year, and then transferred to Leonia High School where she was a D student.