Barbara Ann Corcoran

 Barbara Ann Corcoran is an American businesswoman. She founded The Corcoran Group, a real estate brokerage in New York City, which she sold to NRT for $66 million in 2001 and shortly after, she left the company. Corcoran is one of ABC’s original Shark Tank investors. As of now, she has been in each seasons of Shark Tank. In February of 2020, she had signed 53 deals. The most significant of these 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.  Her mother, Florence, was a homemaker. Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., her father, was constantly changing jobs throughout Corcoran's career. In times, her family relied on deliveries of free food from a local grocer. Corcoran remembers her father as a drunkard who sometimes treated her mother with condescension and disrespect, especially when the fact that he was drinking. Corcoran was a struggle in school and was diagnosed with dyslexia. She attended a local Catholic elementary school before beginning high school 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.