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Marisa Santoro        

Former Wall Street IT Executive, Founder of In Our Shoes, Diversity Consultant

Marisa Santoro, a former Wall Street IT executive with a 21-year career in Financial Services, is the founder of the career leadership platform and Gutsy Leader community, In Our Shoes (www.InRShoes.com). She is a corporate leadership trainer, keynote speaker, career coach, diversity and inclusion consultant, and author of "Own Your Authority" (McGraw Hill) and "Influence Through Instinct".

Santoro's expertise in leadership and professional development, as well as effective business communication, has supported business leaders across various industries at organizations such as Pfizer, Merck, American Express, UBS, Anheuser-Busch, Allianz Global Investors, Sony Music, S&P Global, State Farm, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), New York Council of Nonprofits, Women in Tech International (WITI), Aetna Healthcare, New York University (NYU), NYU Langone Medical Center, and government agencies. She has also worked with New York and New Jersey municipalities.

A TEDx speaker and Woman of Influence award honoree from New York Business Journal and BizWomen.com, Santoro has been recognized for mentoring and coaching midcareer leaders, executives, healthcare professionals, and sales leaders to achieve higher levels of influence. She writes a career column for American City Business Journals, covering their how-to career and business strategy sections, with articles published across 44 cities in the United States.

Her TED talk, 'Speaking Without Apology,' guides professionals on how to detach from language that feeds into the 'Sorry Syndrome', making subtle tweaks in speech to highlight their assets. Santoro delivers seminars, workshops, webinars, coaching, microlearning 'just in time' modules, and self-paced multimedia courses to fit organizational training needs. Her programs address how to authentically build trust as leaders and advance in careers, focusing on personal branding, effective delegation, and developing influential soft skills. Her courses, based on "The Success Principles®" curriculum, are designed to boost confidence, tackle daily challenges, and achieve personal and professional goals.

Speech Topics


Speaking without Apology

Discover how your dialogue and internal self-talk impacts how you are perceived today and is affecting your confidence levels. Learn to recognize ways in which you can detach from language which feeds into the 'Sorry Syndrome' – apologetic words that imply inadequacy rather than exemplifying strength. Learn how subtle tweaks in your speech can springboard you from diluting your value to spotlighting your assets. Receive guidance on how to speak with confidence, intention and clarity, positively influencing how others respond to you. In this unique leadership course, you will master your mindset on how you see yourself first and upgrade your communication style immediately.

How to Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be

You want to achieve breakthrough success through the goals you have set for your career and/or team and attract greater opportunity into your life. You want to enjoy more vibrant relationships, have more free time, be more productive and realize a more fulfilling life. You want to learn how to stay focused on your goals when everyday stresses at work and home take away your best time and energy. You want to leverage your 'know, like and trust' relationships and prepare for opportunities that would skyrocket you. You want to have fun and fulfillment in virtually everything you do. You want to replace suppression with joy. You want to learn new skills easier. You want to win back business partners. You want to delegate the work activities that rob you of time. You want to get your staff working better as a team, become more productive.

Live life by design, not default. In this course, you will learn a proven system to achieve anything you want. Get the tools and teaching you need to remain accountable, boost your income, dramatically increase your free time, improve your relationships, create more balance and joy in your life and experience a new level of happiness. You will learn the tools to increase your confidence, tackle daily challenges, live with passion and purpose, and realize all your ambitions. This step-by-step live course spells out timeless principles and practices used by the world’s most successful men and women—proven principles and strategies that can be adapted for your own life, whether you want to be the best salesperson in your company, become a leading architect, score top grades in school, lose weight, buy your dream home or just get back into the job market.

Based on The Success Principles® curriculum – this course has helped thousands of people achieve success in their life. This is a system designed to teach you the proven, step-by-step success strategies for designing and creating the life you want both professionally and personally.

5 Ways to Own Your Authority In your Career

In the world of leadership development, there’s no shortage of advice on what to do to drive career success—but very little is said about who to be and listening to your intuition. While leadership skills are important, self-trust is the foundation that great leadership is built upon—and developing it is a deeply personal process. In Own Your Authority, career leadership expert Marisa Santoro provides the knowledge, tools, and insights you need to understand and embrace your authentic personality and trust your intuition.

'This is the heart of increasing confidence in any area,' she writes, 'taking on risk in small increments, stepping into new territory, facing fears, learning, failing, growing, and circling back to take on more risk that will stretch but not freeze you.'

Great leaders communicate clearly, speak up when it matters most, and thrive on taking on measured risks. Through self-awareness, they embrace acts of discomfort every day—all in the name of learning, growing, and achieving higher levels of influence and leadership.

And it all comes with self-trust and confidence.

Leadership Training Development

  • Find your voice: Speaking without Apology
  • Elevate your Leadership Edge in Management
  • Own your Authority as a Thought Leader with Influence
  • Pay it Forward. Develop your High-Potential Leaders
  • From Staff to Supervisor: Own your Authority During Transition
  • Self-Promote with Ease and Authenticity
  • Negotiate What You Need in your Career
  • Fearlessly Network: Grow your Professional Pipeline
  • Course Correct with Conflict Management
  • Leadership Academy
  • New Hire Training

Job and Career Development

  • Presentation Skills that Speak Purpose and Impact
  • How to Secure Buy-In Every Time
  • Embrace your Raving Fans, to Influence Change
  • Write a Winning Resume that Promotes your Expertise
  • Navigate the Interview from Strategic Start to Smooth Finish
  • Breakthrough as a Female Leader in Technology
  • Foundations for Career Success

Mindset and Personal Development

  • Increase your Emotional Intelligence
  • Protect your Energy: Fierce Time Management
  • Breakthrough from Fear to Action
  • Own your Power in Difficult, Troubling Situations
  • The Art of Listening and Being Fully Present

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Sales Leadership

  • Unleash as an Emerging Entrepreneur
  • How to Get from Where you are to Where You Want to Be

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

  • Foundations of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
  • Strategic Roundtable to plan your DEI Agenda
  • Make it Real. Building Inclusive Environments
  • Unconscious Bias
  • Inclusive Communication
  • Allyship

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