Research Director and Partner
Maria brings 12 years of organizational and market research and marketing communications strategy experience to Compass. Most recently, she served as Research and Strategy Manager in Microsoft's Technical Community Network (TCN) where she was responsible for researching and developing the three year plan for the professional community of Microsoft's top 500 technical leaders. Prior to that, she was Group Research Manager in Corporate Market Research and Insights, managing a team of researchers who collaborated to develop research-informed strategies with corporate communications, the corporate brand team, legal and corporate affairs, and trustworthy computing. She also managed all of Microsoft's global image and government elites research.
Maria also has extensive start-up experience, having established two marketing consulting companies. The first of these is Knowledge Capital Group, which focuses on developing strategic messaging and positioning and analyst relations. The second company was SageCircle, an analyst relations consulting firm, which grew to US $4M in revenues. These firms provided consulting services to technology and internet start-up companies as well as Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, Cisco and Nortel.
Maria holds a Ph.D. in political sociology from Boston University and an MA in International Relations, also from Boston University. Her work has been quoted or printed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fast Company and the Boston Globe, and her doctoral dissertation research formed the basis for the book, "One Nation, After All" by Alan Wolfe.