Maria Sturm is an organizational consultant and recognized facilitator, educator and coach. She has an independent consulting practice, is a facilitator and teacher for the Baak Management Center (the Dutch center for Leadership Development) and is Associate Teacher of Change at the VU University in Amsterdam. Maria works with leaders in profit and public organizations facilitating personal/professional development retreats on helping leadership groups, working teams and organizations to build sustainable capacities in collaborative learning and organizational development. She also teaches strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship to leaders in key-positions in organizations.
Maria received her doctorate in Organizational Learning from the University of Utrecht. Following ten years of developing company learning and development programs and project management for the Dutch Railway Company, she was a co-founder of the Change Factory, Berenschot (a Dutch consulting Firm). For 5 years she was a senior managing
consultant for Berenschot. Her focus was on leading strategy and organizational change processes, learning and development programs. She has worked in and across many different sectors and organizations, including health, educational and governmental organizations, international food companies, technical engineering and financial
institutes. In 2004, Maria started a new consulting firm Ten Have Change management, with three other partners. In 2008 she was the founder of SALINE Advies, her own consulting firm.
Since 2007, Maria has expanded the scope of her work to a more systemic approach on organizational learning and transformation. She is a master practitioner of Systemic Organizational Constellation work. Her focus now is on social and business innovation and learning. She is always fascinated to support people and organizations to connect with their deeper wisdom, talents, vision and actions. Her aim is to create awareness of the fact that a richness of perspectives and wisdom is available to help people, as they want to create and enable the emerging future. She uses deep-diving methods like Theory U, dialogue, Future search and large scale interventions.
In 2012 Maria will publish an article on the dilemma’s and opportunities of Co-creation in the Dutch journal for Management and Organization. She has started the Dutch Center for Co-creation aiming to support people to develop their capacities for co-creation and sustainability. To offer leadership, strategy and innovation programs in an international context and action-learning tracks for teams who are involved in co-creation; help organizations to realize co-creation projects in which all stakeholders can participate; to work with a team of experts (visual thinking; research specialists with experience in Web-based techniques; process consultants; strategy consultants); and help organizations to make their organizations more ‘future proof,‘ i.e. the Organization is set up in accordance with the principles of the 21st century (sustainable, network based,) and to support organizations in this transformation.
