Where nervous system, leadership, and systems meet
Trauma integration practitioner and ICF Master Certified Coach for people shaping high-consequence systems
Hi, I'm Maria Marc
Trauma integration practitioner and ICF Master Certified Coach
I work with people navigating speed, power, ethical complexity, and the human consequences of technological and organizational change.
Most leadership coaching begins with strategy and performance. Most trauma work stays outside the realities of power, culture, responsibility, and institutional life.
Having worked in both worlds, I bridge that gap.
Trained under Dr. Gabor Maté
Compassionate Inquiry (CI)
Trained under Dr. Janina Fisher
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST)
+6,000 private sessions
+1,000 hours group work
Master Certified Coach (ICF)
Relational Trauma
My approach begins with a simple recognition: leadership is lived through a human nervous system. The conditions you are carrying shape how you relate, decide, exercise authority, respond to conflict, and participate in the systems around you.
I work with institutional decision-makers, AI leaders, founders, people leaders, product and technical leaders, and responsible-innovation practitioners who want to lead ambitious work without making urgency, disconnection, or self-abandonment the price of participation.
The Surfacing Practice addresses the early adaptations that shape how you lead, and the systems that keep rewarding those adaptations. Together, we make the hidden pattern visible, strengthen your capacity to stay present with what is true, and translate that insight into choices you can live with.
The Surfacing Practice
1
SURFACE
Identify the hidden pattern beneath over-functioning, perfectionism, conflict avoidance, or self-erasure.
2
STABILIZE
Build enough nervous-system safety to meet the pattern without overwhelm, shame, or collapse.
3
RECLAIM
Practice decisions, boundaries, relationships, and leadership actions aligned with integrity.
How I Work
My approach draws on neuroscience, relational trauma theory, Compassionate Inquiry (CI), and Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) - each a different lens on how the nervous system holds, and eventually releases, what it's been carrying. Where it serves the work, I also draw on archetypal frameworks to support integration once there's enough nervous-system stability to do that safely.
Together, these modalities let me work with what's beneath the surface: the over-responsibility, the perfectionism, the inhibited emotion, the chronic self-abandonment. Not to 'fix you' - to help you recognize these patterns as protections that once made real sense, so you can finally set down what you no longer need to carry.
What Becomes Possible
As the nervous system settles and what was hidden becomes visible, something shifts. Old, familiar defenses give way to something more durable: the capacity to live and lead from integrity rather than pressured performance. Clients describe it less as becoming someone new, and more as finally becoming who they already were - underneath the roles, the titles, and the coping strategies that got them this far. The Surfacing Practice is about clarity, dignity, authenticity, and self-trust. This is not curated confidence - it's the hard-earned, real thing that no one can take away, even when life falls apart.
My Track Record
Over more than 6,000 conversations, I have supported leaders, founders, practitioners, and change-makers navigating complexity, transition, and institutional strain. I am a Certified Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner and ICF-Master Certified Coach whose work integrates nervous-system intelligence, leadership development, and trauma-informed systems thinking. I hold an MA in Leading Innovation and Change, with advanced training in Relational Trauma, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), and Neurodivergence.
Trained under Dr. Gabor Maté
Compassionate Inquiry (CI)
Trained under Dr. Janina Fisher
Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST)
+6,000 private sessions
+1,000 hours group work
Master Certified Coach (ICF)
Relational Trauma
Ways we can work together
Boundary Statement
I offer non-pathologizing, trauma-skilled coaching, facilitation, and education. As an ICF Master Certified Coach with certifications in Compassionate Inquiry and TIST, I bring depth of training to our exploration of the patterns shaping how you lead, relate, make decisions, and participate in systems. This work is grounded in the ethics and scope of coaching. It does not provide psychotherapy, clinical diagnosis, or crisis care. When your needs extend beyond that scope, I will support you in identifying appropriate professional care.