About Maria Raines

In 2020, Maria created Shift Practitoners to amplify the impact of her trusted network and to ignite a movement to shift leadership.

Her career in Communications, Marketing and Event Production spans more than two decades. While managing content marketing, community engagement, and the design and production of events and learning programs for a leading HR forum and leadership consultancy, she became interested in leadership and adult development theory and began training as a facilitator in 2017.

In 2019 Maria experienced first hand the unintentional damage that a lack of leadership capability can do. While working for a small, fast growing social enterprise, she witnessed new employees enter the organisation full of enthusiasm, confidence and fresh thinking only to decline rapidly into a state of high anxiety, stress and eventual burnout. In addition to being an unhealthy and uninspring place to work, the lack of effective leadership made it impossible to meet business outcomes.

This insight fuelled her passion to promote leadership transformation and she began applying her marketing and industry expertise to supporting aligned practitoners, coaches and facilitators, to bring their offerings to market.

QUALIFICATIONS & INFLUENCES

Maria’s passion for diversity, equity and inclusion has been a driving force since studying Sociology, Feminism and Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, and acquiring her BA, in the early nineties.

Maria became an accredited and registered Time to Think facilitator in 2018 and is an active and founding member of the Illawarra Facilitators Collective. Her time volunteering as a Primary Ethics Teacher further strengthened her resolve to work with and for purpose-led and values driven leaders, educators and change makers.

Key influences include Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment (facilitation), Margaret Heffernan (leadership) and Seth Godin (marketing). The leaders currently inspiring Maria are: New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern; Senior Australian of The Year & Indigenous Educator, Dr Miriam-Rose Ugunmerr Baumann and Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg.

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