A former director at Google, Maria led the Fashion and Beauty Cloud and Digital Marketing commercial teams in the US and London. Areas of focus included using AI to achieve hyper-personalization, creating sustainable supply chains, and redesigning ‘the store of the future’.

Maria is a fashion maven, with nearly a decade at Gucci in senior roles, including General Manager of Northern Europe and Associate Vice President of Retail for Europe. She started out at McKinsey across New York, San Francisco and Mexico City, and covered Luxury Goods and Retail for the European Consumer/Retail Investment Banking team at Lehman Brothers.

Maria has a knack for developing high-performing teams. Focusing on sustainability, she led Google’s fashion moonshot to help clothing brands source more responsibly. Her thought leadership has been recognized in Vogue and at industry events like the World Expo, Davos, the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, New York and British Fashion Weeks and the World Retail Congress.

She sits on advisory boards at Textile Exchange and the sustainable off-pitch soccer fashion brand ABLE MADE. She loves supporting mission-driven entrepreneurs and is involved with start-up hubs like the NY Fashion Tech Lab and Harvard Innovation Labs.

Maria graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School. With an Italian heritage, she’s into all things Italian, from Milan street style and Venetian glass to the spectacular Amalfi Coast and stracciatella ice cream.

Her superpower is staying cool under pressure. For example, smoothing things out when her client’s ecommerce site went down in its key trading period, sealing a time-sensitive partnership agreement where the parties were locking horns, or rescuing her three kids from a collapsing ceiling.

Maria gets a real kick out of learning, with Coach K and LeBron James autobiographies, The House of Gucci, Shoe Dog and her weekly dose of James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter among her favorite recent reads. 

With your traditional corporate background, why did you later venture into purpose-driven work? 

At the age of 40, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Next thing I knew, I had to have emergency surgery and subsequently found myself hooked up on monitors in the  ICU. It was terrifying. Ultimately, however, this experience catapulted me into setting the right priorities for my life: my family, my friends and a relentless focus on doing  meaningful, purpose-led work.

What’s one of the crazier things you’ve done in your professional life? 

I left the security of investment banking to move to Italy, without speaking a word of Italian. Taking a hefty pay cut, I managed to persuade Gucci to take me on in a new role, working in their Milan flagship store ensuring a strong link between retail and buyers. My parents thought I had completely lost it. Instead, I followed my heart and gut, one of the best decisions I have made in my career.

What do you value most in relationships? 

Keeping it real.

How has your upbringing influenced you?

My dad’s a city blue-collar, Irish Catholic American. My mom comes from an Italian lineage of doctors and lawyers. I’d walk to the symphony with my grandmother past job sites where my father’s family was installing electricals. And I would return home to a rural, farming community just 45 minutes from Philadelphia. I often felt like an ‘insider outsider’. This helps me to this date to understand, deeply appreciate, and embrace all kinds of perspectives.

What are your absolute pet peeves? 

Knuckle cracking; when someone eats the last item and leaves the empty bag in the pantry; close talkers.

Who wouldn’t you be the right fit for?

I’m not right for clients who can’t reconcile making money with doing good for their greater communities. Who prefer the status quo to dreaming big. Who won’t experiment, as that’s the best way to innovate. I also will not work with anyone who’s unethical.