About Maria

Founder Quirky Bird Strengths

Maria is an experienced coach, facilitator and leadership consultant committed to enabling people to thrive and flourish. She has been coaching individuals, leaders and teams around strengths for over 15 years and is a Strengthscope© Master Coach and member of the British Psychological Society. She is fully accredited to utilise the full suite of psychometric tools from Strengthscope©, the only strengths based psychometric to have achieved Registered Test status from the British Psychological Society. 

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Maria is known for her energy, dynamism and presence, bringing an engaging, authentic style to any relationship, whilst also bringing fresh thinking and fun. She is at her best when connecting with people with ease and genuine interest, enabling them to be at their best more of the time. Clients describe her style as warm, flexible and intuitive, but say that she won’t shy away from being challenging where needed. She is passionate about helping people turn concepts and ideas into pragmatic solutions that solve real business problems.

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Maria has extensive experience gained through senior L&D roles and running her own Leadership and Coaching Consultancy. This experience spans across sector leading businesses and focuses on design, implementation and delivery of a broad range of leadership, coaching, talent and strengths-based development solutions. She thrives when coaching and facilitating others to learn and grow.

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Her most recent roles have seen Maria directing the Leadership, Talent and Capability agendas at global retailers. She has developed a broad range of coaching programmes, has been an active internal coach-mentor, integrated and facilitated strengths-based approaches to development and progression with a particular focus on Executive and Senior Leadership Teams.

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Maria believes that people are inherently driven to achieve their potential. She encourages and supports them through a strengths and solution focused approach whilst creating the right environment for her clients to truly think for themselves, focusing on how they can thrive and make real, sustainable change in their work and life.