Barbara Ann Corcoran

 Barbara Ann Corcoran (born March 10, 1949) is an American businesswoman, investor and speaker. She is also a consultant, speaker writer, syndicated columnist, author, and television personality. She co-founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate brokerage in New York City, which she sold to NRT for $66 million in 2001, and shortly thereafter , the company was sold. Corcoran was one of the original Shark Tank investors. She has appeared on every season of ABC's Shark Tank. As of February 2020 she had closed 53 deals. One of them was a $350,000 investment to Coverplay at 40%. Corcoran was born in Edgewater (New Jersey) as the second child of ten in a Catholic Irish working class family. Florence, her mother, was an excellent homemaker. Edwin W. Corcoran Jr. was her father. He was always changing jobs during Corcoran’s life. Her family frequently relied on free food deliveries from a local grocer. Corcoran says that her father was a drunken man who was rude to her mother and sarcastic remarks. Corcoran was a struggle in school, and eventually discovered that she was dyslexic. Corcoran attended a local Catholic elementary school, and then began 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.