Named 2015 Honoree of NYC “Women of Influence” award by American Business Journals.
Harvard Club, New York City
For over 19 years as an American IT executive on Wall Street, a career columnist for global financial news, cited expert for women’s leadership in the Huffington Post, motivational speaker for corporate professionals and sought after speaker in the IT circuit, Marisa Santoro guides women professionals and small business owners on how to reclaim their confidence, tap into their intuition, take on their inner dialogue using proven tactical tools and strategies of a proven step-by-step system teaching exactly what to do in order to advance in their careers from the ground up, especially when working in aggressive, male-dominated environments or foreign culture. The unique programs she has created result in a mindset shift towards being assertive and creative about molding the career that you want as you steadily attract opportunities to you, versus pushing so hard anymore.
She has served as a founding member of the Leadership Advisory Council for Forbes’ top-ranked Swedish firm Qlikview, sat on the board of directors for the Manhattan chapter of the National Association for Female Executives , has obtained the sponsorship of New York University’s Women’s Initiative programs leading events for their female alumni and worked with organizations helping them kick off their own internal women’s leadership movement such as New York Life Insurance , global law firm Salans LLP at their UK headquarters and Consulting magazine’s top ranked firm to work for in the US: Slalom Consulting and many more organizations making strides to elevate women towards more leadership.
Delivering an authentic professional training program and toolkit, In Our Shoes education is a compilation of everything Marisa has learned from raising her own rank through Corporate America, going up, down and sideways, growing her own business, her interviews with executives and entrepreneurs on their lessons learned and heart-centered mentoring of many professionals throughout her career.
Why these empowerment tools & business strategies stand apart from conventional training programs for women.
[highlight]How long have you been doing what you do and how did you get to be a Leadership Strategist and Career Expert?[/highlight]
To answer this question, it’s probably best that I share with you a defining moment that brought me to where I am today, mentoring on exactly what to do to get unstuck and take the reigns of your life, going after what you want – no matter what.
The defining moment in my life took place when I was swapping in and out of shoes balancing the career, family and home fronts on what felt like steroids. I wore the shoes of a female executive on Wall Street in an abrasive environment, a girl geek immersed in a male-dominated field of technology, a survivor of multiple layoff cycles during two desperate periods in the rocky financial services industry while losing my father in hospice care, had just begun my divorce and slipping into the single mom shoes for the first time. I turned to having an assertive gutsy attitude suppressing a knee-jerk reaction to spiral into fear mode. I looked back at all I was most proud of and repackaged myself, reinvented myself you might say and took on more challenging roles giving me new leadership opportunities I never would have received had I not changed my mindset. It was also at that time that I followed my gut, opened my business (In Our Shoes) and began a professional development education platform. How I created consistent results in my career and business was by continuing to apply a series of essential practice-building steps that had always worked for me. Since then I’ve worked with private clients, spoken in front of countless groups inside companies motivating and teaching the steps they need on how to get out there, lift their self-confidence, speak comfortably to anyone in any setting and advance to the next level in their career or business. I never saw this work in my future, but when it came knocking I listened to my gut and never looked back.
When you pull a mirror out and look back at your little wins, you shift to a different level and become very focused on what you want. You become what I call “end-game” oriented; by hook or by crook you get what you need by being non-negotiable about the way you want to feel. I figured out there are systems which could keep me raising my game receiving the things that I wanted. There wasn’t a secret sauce, I had cracked the code several times on how to move ahead ask for what you want and get it; it didn’t have to be stressful or take so long. I have since made a commitment to empowering women showing them how they too can advance in their career or business.
It takes seconds to convince yourself that something isn’t going to work for you. That you’re not good enough. That if it hasn’t happened yet, it never will. Sound familiar?
“No worries about the HOW. Have faith that you were meant to visit here and believe that you have what it takes to go gutsy leading with a career or business you feel fulfilled and purposeful in.”
Sending you love with lots of gutsiness…” 
“I have worn the shoes of being challenged as a woman in technology, working on Wall Street, as a committed working mother, surrounded by only male colleagues, surviving every financial services widespread layoff cycle and economic downturn while being a single mom and only breadwinner. Don‘t strive for perfection. Roll up your sleeves, push forward and go with your gut, even if you don’t know exactly the “how”, you’ll find a way.” – Marisa Santoro, Founder of In Our Shoes.