About
Get To Know Your Leadership Coach
Maria brings over thirty years of corporate HR, talent development, and leadership coaching and development experience to executives and rising business leaders who want to transform leadership potential into a successful reality.
A few words from Maria...
If you’re checking out this page, you are either in search of an executive coach for yourself, trying to solve for a leadership challenge, or leading a team that you know can be "greater than the sum of its parts" but haven’t yet figured out how to synergize and do your best leadership work together. Maybe I can help.
My name is Maria. I'm an executive coach and leadership team interventionist. I work with corporate executives, leadership teams, and rising leaders who are striving to take their leadership performance up a notch.
After a successful, 30-year career in corporate HR, learning, organizational and leadership development roles, I transitioned out of full-time corporate life and launched MG Leadership, a boutique coaching and consulting firm that allows me to:
- work one-to-one with the populations I serve best >> corporate executives, org leaders, and high-potential managers who are preparing for next-level leadership challenges.
- work across industry and organizational lines to support the wider variety of leaders who are striving to increase personal impact and achieve greater results in the complex business environments we all operate in today.
Because I’ve held significant positions of leadership myself and served on leadership teams in complex, globally-spanning, multi-billion-dollar businesses, I can relate first-hand to the challenge that is leadership. I’ve lived and led through periods of corporate growth, market uncertainty, change, mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and downsizings. I’ve hired and fired. I’ve built teams, developed teams, project managed teams and dissolved teams. Like many of you, I’ve celebrated wins and counted a few losses along the way as well. The sum total of those experiences, combined with my coaching credentials and subject matter expertise in corporate leadership & talent development, uniquely position me to help leaders like you leverage your strengths and overcome your challenge areas to do the same.
Today, I coach C-suite leaders and their successors and am passionate about developing high potential talent and women leaders toward next-level roles. Although based in Austin, TX, I’ve worked all over the globe and have the experience to meet the needs of clients in any region.
A few other things you should know:
- I have a reputation for being a truth teller.
- I’m known to be direct, insightful, results-focused and accountability oriented.
- I’m also told that I’m warm, personable, and compassionate both in life and in work.
My credentials include:
- Associate Certified Coach (ACC), credentialed by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
- Certified Executive Coach, credentialed by the Center for Executive Coaching.
- Forbes Council Coach
- Master’s degree in Organizational Communication & Leadership studies
- Bachelor's degrees in both Business Management and Organizational Communication & Behavior Studies.
Still reading? Ok. Here’s a few extra highlights just for fun. Although speaking seriously, if we're going to consider doing great work together, we should start by getting to know each other better first.
>> I’m happily married for over 20 years now and mother to a university-aged daughter who has inherited her mother’s communication skills and her father’s keen interests in the medical sciences. My hobby is cultivating her leadership skills and capabilities toward her bright future.
>> I am drawn to philanthropic work, especially efforts that benefit children, young women coming up in the world of work today, and people whose lives are impacted by cancer. Today, I’m an active member of the Board of Directors for a nationally-recognized cancer support organization that services the Central Texas Area. I also regularly volunteer for youth organizations and the Girl Scouts of America.
>> My career began in a somewhat unlikely place - the commercial truck tire industry. I was hired fresh out of college to lead safety training and injury prevention programs for a nationally distributed network of commercial truck tire and service centers. Sounds like the start of a joke, doesn't it? Nevertheless, I put on the required hard hat and steel-toed boots and quite literally stepped into the work. My “special sauce” was courageousness in the face of challenge and the ability to bring a fresh-eye perspective to the everyday work practices of truck tire engineers and field service techs. Those are strengths that continue to serve me well today.
My training and injury prevention initiatives raised safety awareness, reduced unsafe work practices, decreased days lost from work due to injury, reduced worker compensation claim costs, and improved life-saving safety practices throughout the network. In many ways, it was my entry point into behavioral studies, change management, management development and coaching work. It was a challenging place for a young woman to get her career start but an experience that taught me much and paved the way for a career lifetime full of challenging moments, courageous moves, and opportunities to leave things better than I found them. I've never forgotten it.
>> "I’m not done yet!" This is something I say a lot. I've never been afraid of a challenge and I have an insatiable appetite for this work. In some ways, my career journey is just beginning again. Why don’t you join me for this next part of the ride? We’ll work together to achieve something even greater for you too!
