EXECUTIVE COACH
Maria’s coaching style is pragmatic, commercially grounded, and constructively challenging. She brings focused positive energy into her work - combining strategic clarity, systems thinking, and emotional intelligence to help leaders cut through complexity and act with conviction. As a Thinking Partner, Maria works with CEOs, country heads, and senior executive teams leading transformation and growth mandates. She helps leaders bridge strategy and execution, strengthen cross-market and cross-functional alignment, and lead large-scale change with composure and discipline. Her approach blends empathy with edge - creating reflective space while unlocking the human momentum required to translate ambition into sustained performance.
Experience
Maria brings nearly three decades of operating experience across Asia and Europe, having led enterprise-wide transformation agendas at both market and Group levels within multinational financial institutions. She served as Chief Client Experience Officer at Sun Life Hong Kong, embedding customer-centric capabilities into strategy and operations to drive sustainable performance. She later joined AIA Group Office as Director of Customer Engagement, shaping customer strategy and advancing alignment across 18 markets in Asia within a complex matrix structure. Earlier in her career, Maria founded and scaled the Asia Pacific business of HeathWallace, a human-centred digital consultancy within the WPP network, partnering with leading global financial institutions to design customer-led growth strategies and digital experiences.
She also held senior marketing and change leadership roles at AXA Investment Managers in London, Paris, and Hong Kong, operating within highly matrixed, cross-cultural environments. Across these roles, Maria developed deep expertise in aligning diverse stakeholders, translating vision into disciplined execution, and sustaining commercial performance during periods of transformation. Fluent in English and Cantonese, with working proficiency in Mandarin and French, and holding Canadian, British, and Hong Kong nationality, she brings a cross-cultural perspective particularly valuable in multinational and regional leadership contexts.
Areas of expertise: High Performing Teams | Effective and authentic leadership | Inspire to drive engagement | Leadership through Coaching | Effective Key Stakeholder Management and navigating the System.
Education, Qualifications, Professional Memberships
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