Maria Pressentin

Head of Learning & Organizational Development
The Ken Blanchard Companies

Maria Pressentin is the Head of Learning & Organizational Development at The Ken Blanchard Companies, in Asia Pacific. With many years of international-industry business experience in leadership and sales positions, in Fortune 500 organizations, Maria has successfully built 6 start-ups and is known to be the cornerstone for several MNC expansion projects. This rich experience makes her skillful and pragmatic in diagnosing the 21st-Century-Economy organizational vicissitudes by virtue of people-centered-approaches, helping strategic and operational leaders become more corporate entrepreneurs with an agile and people-centric mindset. Maria also brings a global perspective to her work since she has lived in eight countries, worked with over 40 nations directly, and speaks five languages. She understands the rising need for equitable leadership competence and has developed a formula to both helping individuals to build leadership capacity by enhance influencing skills towards achieving effectiveness in collaboration across global teams, and to becoming outstanding intrapreneurs. Maria is an expert in improving personal effectiveness and enhancing the ability to attain higher conversational capacity during business negotiations.

Maria is a multiple-award-winning executive coach, academic researcher, and leadership development professional, honored by the HRD World Congress and the ACBSP scientific accreditation body. She is also a dynamic, research-based, keynote speaker who connects with the core issues of an audience to deliver an energetic message that inspires action and self-empowerment. She has served as the vice president of the International Coach Federation, Singapore, and has developed coaches as the chairperson of Peer Coaching sub-committee.

Maria holds two master-degrees in Strategic Management and Organizational Research and is pursuing her Ph.D. in entrepreneurial leadership and innovation. She has published several articles in academic reviews, journals and books, with a special interest in the leadership, entrepreneurship, cultural dynamics, and social-for-profit innovation impact.

Maria is the director of several merger and acquisition consulting and executive coaching engagements with clients, worldwide. She has been featured in several radio talk-shows, news feeds and magazines in Asia and in Europe about different leadership philosophies.