Maria currently focuses her work on Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety and its capacity to make our lives better. 

She is the founder of Plan-A, a global initiative mobilizing leaders across sectors to ensure humanity not only survives but thrives in the age of AI. Together with RAND, Plan-A developed an experience that reimagines their Cold War–era strategic exercises that helped develop intellectual foundations and frameworks for nuclear deterrence, non-proliferation, and misuse — for the age of AI.

Maria sits on numerous boards. She is Chairman of the Board for LawZero (along with Board Members like Yoshua Bengio, Turing Prize winner and AI creator). Maria brings her AI and leadership experience to the organization. She is Chair Emeritus of The Girl Effect (Nike), and on the board of the National Hockey League (NHL) Seattle Kraken. 

Maria’s previous board experience includes major companies and organizations — Cloudflare (a world’s leader in connectivity and cybersecurity company), the MIT Media Lab Advisory Council, GoFundMe, the Safeco Corporation, National Academy of Sciences Commission on Labor Standards, American Hospital of Paris Board of Governors, the International Commission on Labor Standards, the Eastern Congo Initiative, and the board of the World Surf League. She is also a part of the World Bank Gender Action Group and the World Economic Forum Global Governance Initiative.

Maria’s experience in operations, growth, and innovation stems from her leadership across industry.

Maria is widely known for her work with Nike, joining in 1998 as the founding Vice President of Corporate Responsibility. Maria helped spearhead the effort to overhaul Nike’s business practices and the company’s global footprint in arenas like sustainability, governance and labor practices, leading to industry-changing policies. As a result, Nike is regularly ranked among top Corporate Social Responsibility efforts worldwide.

In 2005, Maria founded the Nike Foundation, focusing on unleashing the potential of adolescent girls experiencing poverty. Along with her team, Maria hypothesized that investing in adolescent girls would pay enormous dividends — not just for girls, but for their families, communities, and nations. Alongside economists from the World Bank, the Nike Foundation demonstrated how empowering girls could be the greatest point of leverage in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. This idea, which would come to be known as the “Girl Effect,” became the spark for a movement. In 2015, having invested $130 million through 150 partners across 90 countries, Nike transitioned the Girl Effect into an independent organization, and Maria became the Chair Emeritus of the Girl Effect Board of Directors.

Maria gives speeches domestically and internationally, at gatherings like Google Zeitgeist, the World Economic Forum, and the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. She was recognized by Fast Company as part of their “League of Extraordinary Women.” 

She began her career as a journalist and then moved to the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Media Affairs. She managed communications and public relations for MCI Communications, served as Director of Public Affairs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and led Corporate Affairs for Microsoft’s European operations in Paris, France.

A native of Everett, Washington, Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from McGill University and a Master of Science degree from Georgetown University, as well as an Honorary Doctorate of Humanity from Babson College. She is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Program and a Visiting Fellow of Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government at The University of Oxford.  

She lives in Seattle, Paris and London.