Maria’s diverse and successful professional history has one common denominator: a desire to truly get to know people. This curiosity has driven Maria from her early days as a startup founder and young political activist up until today as general manager of Speedinvest Heroes.

“The moment when you connect with another person and challenge her towards a new set of possibilities is what I love the most!”,, says Maria.

This social skillset, practiced over many years in various leadership positions and professional trainings (such as a Master degree in Mediation) is a crucial asset for  Speedinvest Heroes. Building out our network of talents and then quickly matching the potential of a given candidate with the right opportunity in our portfolio, is where Maria excels like no one else.

Maria’s personal working history starts 1992 in the early internet area. As the GM of one of the first big dot.com success stories coming out of Austria (Datenwerk/Blue-C), she saw her company grow to an agency group with more than 200 employees across Europe, including an IPO at the “Neue Markt”. Having sold her stake early enough before the bust, Maria continued her entrepreneurial path that included managing a research think tank on Artificial Intelligence (long before the hype), spending time in Silicon Valley and, eventually, helping to found Speedinvest as the first business angel fund in Austria.

With this sort of CV, Maria does not need to believe all the hype we see today around startups. At the same time, she is highly aware of the massive disruption digitalisation brings to our personal and business live.

Heroes is a natural platform for Maria’s skills, combining her appetite to rethink old business sectors such as HR with her focus on the human element in business. Building healthy companies will always be built on finding exceptional talent. And as we all know, this talent is spread thin and wide, so a true commitment to diversity, low entry barriers and continuous education will be a crucial element of any HR strategy.

For Maria, having gone through many diverse roles and businesses, this approach comes natural. as does her positive attitude towards people in general.