Maria Ross

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™. That is Maria Ross's mantra, and she has spent decades proving it.

Maria is a speaker, author, and empathy strategist who helps forward-thinking leaders connect and engage with employees and customers. Now more than ever, she shows them how to balance empathy with accountability and high performance, staying human-focused while leading through rapid change and the rise of AI. Her goal is to empower leaders to boost engagement, performance, and resilience in tumultuous times.

Her message is urgent and actionable: in a world where artificial intelligence is reshaping every industry overnight, human skills are not becoming obsolete. They are becoming our greatest competitive edge. Leaders who cannot leverage empathy, curiosity, and connection will have nowhere to hide. Those who can will build stronger teams, drive better results, and create cultures people actually want to be part of.

Maria is the author of several books, including her recent award-winning The Empathy Dilemma: How Successful Leaders Balance Performance, People, and Personal Boundaries, and the host of the top-rated The Empathy Edge podcast, now in its sixth year with hundreds of interviews with executives, psychologists, authors, and global changemakers. She is a Forbes.com contributor with a column on Workplace Empathy, and has previously written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, and Newsweek.com. She is also the creator of two LinkedIn Learning empathy courses.

A TEDx alumna, Maria delivers dynamic keynotes at conferences including SIM Women, SHRM Inclusion, and PSI/Vet, as well as talks and leadership workshops for clients such as New York Life, CHRISTUS Health, Salesforce, Google, TBWA Worldwide, and Northwestern Medicine, along with tech companies, nonprofits, and academic programs. Her media appearances include MSNBC, NPR, ABC News, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Thrive Global.

But Maria's expertise is not just professional. It is deeply personal.

In 2008, a near-fatal brain aneurysm rupture left her fighting for her life in ways she had never anticipated. Inside that hospital system, she experienced firsthand what empathy at scale looks and feels like, and what it costs everyone when it is absent. She documented that harrowing and ultimately triumphant journey in her memoir, Rebooting My Brain. While she carries lingering cognitive deficits around memory and vocabulary recall, she worked relentlessly in rehab to develop strategies so she could continue to use her voice for good. That experience became the foundation of everything she now teaches.

Maria walked out of recovery and into motherhood with a renewed mission: to show leaders that humanity is not a liability. It is their greatest competitive edge.

She brings to every stage a signature blend of humor and heart, backed by rigorous research and grounded in real human stories. A former professional child actress and voiceover artist, she knows how to hold a room. She is the granddaughter of four Italian immigrants, a proud redhead, and a lover of British crime dramas, red wine, and Jeopardy! She is a firm believer that every leader alive can choose to strengthen their empathy muscle and build a lasting legacy, starting today.

Maria lives in Northern California with her husband, her son, one rescue Bully named Bean, seven chickens, and a gecko named Harold.