Maria is a senior advisor to boards and executive teams on strategic communications, stakeholder engagement, crisis and reputation. She draws on decades of experience reconciling public, private, investor and NGO positions in the arenas of environmental sustainability, climate risk and social impact.
Through her work, Maria helps clients to define and communicate ambitious leadership programs -- and to transform the decision-making, organizational culture and operational structures that enable these programs to succeed.
Her work has included: PepsiCo’s ambitious global Performance with Purpose effort, led by former CEO Indra K. Nooyi; Bloomberg Philanthropy’s pioneering work in climate finance and decarbonization ambition; the PwC-initiated CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion and many more.
Previously, Maria was a Partner at Brunswick Group, a global critical issues and financial situations advisory firm. Over 15 years, she helped establish and grow Brunswick’s Business & Society practice and launched four related offers: ESG, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Foundations and Nonprofits and Stakeholder Engagement. For six years, she was concurrently head of Brunswick’s New York office, the second largest in the global network. In this role, she led a team of over 200 client-facing and business services professionals and held numerous roles in the firm’s senior management team, including as founding co-chair of the U.S. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and as head of the New York Office’s Incident Management Response Team through the Covid-19 pandemic. As a senior global client relationship manager, Maria helped guide the firm’s approach to scaling client relationship management best practices. She is an avid mentor and an active teacher of her profession.
Maria began her career at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) contributing what became the Sustainable Development Goals. During this time, she used her grassroots organizing skills to mobilize Youth for Habitat II -- a global youth coalition that influenced international policy on youth economic development and entrepreneurship. The group continues today.
She is an experienced opinion researcher, learning the craft as Director of International Political and Corporate Campaigns for Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB). Here, she supported presidential and parliamentary races in the U.S., Ukraine, South Korea, and Zimbabwe. She has worked extensively with leaders to craft research-driven winning messages and strategies that build public support.
Maria graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School and Tufts University, where she was Chair of the Board of the Institute for Global Leadership from 2019-2022 and a board member since 2012. She also serves on the board of the Turkish Philanthropy Fund. In 2002, Maria and her husband founded Double Knot, the premier gallery of tribal carpets and textiles in New York City. She is the mother of two teens and loves to travel, cook and research her family history through its varied multi-cultural roots that include Italian, Filippino and Polish heritage.