I just went to check-- I have 6 first-degree connections with the phrase "thought leader" in their title. This out of about 800 connections, all of which are people I've met in-person. Some real-world examples:

* "Independent Thought Leader and Consultant"

* "Strategy, Innovation, and Distruptive Technology thought leader in the Hyperscale/Cloud business"

* "AI Thought Leader + Founder at <company name>.ai"

* "C++ expert and agile process thought leader"

When expanded to 2nd degree connections, I get more than 10 pages of results when searching for the phrase "Thought Leader" (in quotes, so it's not a fuzzy search phrase).