ABOUT MARIA BRINCK, CPCC, ACC

Most leadership experts spend their careers studying leadership.

Maria Brinck spent hers living inside three remarkably different leadership traditions.

Raised in Sweden's deeply collaborative culture, Maria developed an early appreciation for leadership built on trust, shared responsibility, and collective success. She later built her career inside some of the world's most performance-driven organizations, rising into the top 2% of pharmaceutical sales professionals in America while holding leadership roles with companies including GE, Eli Lilly & Co., and Novo Nordisk.

From the outside, Maria had achieved everything success was supposed to look like. Yet beneath the accomplishments, she experienced the same disconnect, burnout, and loss of meaning affecting millions of leaders today. It raised a question she couldn't ignore:What if we had become extraordinarily good at achieving success—but forgotten what makes it sustainable?

‍Seeking answers, Maria stepped away from corporate life and spent six months living and working alongside Indigenous communities in the Congo Basin rainforest of Cameroon. While supporting the rehabilitation of chimpanzees and gorillas, she encountered a radically different way of understanding leadership.

Tribal leaders listened before they spoke. They prioritized collective success over individual power. Decisions were made with an awareness of community, future generations, and the interconnectedness of life. Combined with the leadership values embedded in her Swedish upbringing, the experience fundamentally reshaped her understanding of what leadership can, and should be.

Those three worlds became the foundation of Maria's work.

Today, she helps organizations close the growing gap between human performance and human wisdom, inspiring leaders to reconnect exceptional execution with the deeper capacities that sustain it: questioning assumptions, leading beyond ego, listening before reacting, expanding circles of connection, and making decisions that strengthen both people and performance.

As the founder of Zynergy International, Maria advises boards, CEOs, executive teams, and HR leaders on building leaders who can navigate complexity, accelerate change, and create sustainable high performance. Her clients include Quanex, AstraZeneca, Beacon, DaVita, Vizient, and Stryker.

Maria is the author of The Leadership We Need, a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), and an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) through the International Coaching Federation. She is based in Colorado.