Marie Szuts

Executive Coach
Co-director, Responsive Conference
Former VP of People, Figma

Marie has always been drawn to working with people and their stories. Her early career started in food journalism, where she led the production of two magazines centered around Italian cuisine and culture, as well as one about spicy food from around the globe. Working with such an enthusiastic community of makers, readers, and writers further deepened her appreciation for the power and interconnection of storytelling and culture (not to mention the warmth and community that comes from breaking bread with others!).

Her work eventually led into tech, where she was a very early employee at an educational technology start-up. There, she led combined teams of content experts and engineers to reinvent the way digital textbooks were designed by educators and experienced by learners. She then spent the next few years building out the People function at a hypergrowth design tech start-up called Figma.

Marie loves helping companies and leaders build cultures and build their own capacity—coaching managers and teams was my favorite part of my job, and I knew I wanted to make that the centerpiece of my next endeavor. So now I operate my own coaching and consulting practice, as well as teach and mentor HR leaders through programs such as the People Leader Accelerator. She has also served for over a decade on the board of directors of a national music non-profit (leading the board for four years as president), and is passionate about volunteer board service as a way to develop leadership and communication skills.