Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Maria DeLorenzis Reyes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Maria , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

The most important lesson I learned about leadership – and the one that has shaped me as a business owner – came from one of the worst experiences I ever had in my career.

I remember it clearly: I was getting ready to go on a long-awaited vacation, something I had worked hard for and desperately needed. As I was walking out, my boss asked me for the phone number where I would be reachable on vacation. At first, I was stunned. I thought, Is he serious? And then it hit me — he didn’t even realize how inappropriate the request was because he was just doing what had been modeled for him. That moment opened my eyes to something I’d been feeling but couldn’t quite name: leadership was broken.

The truth is people aren’t promoted because they’re great leaders; they’re promoted because they’re good at their jobs. Suddenly they’re leading teams without training, knowledge or practice — without tools and any real understanding of what good leadership looks like. So what do they do? They copy what they’ve seen before — even if what they’ve seen doesn’t work. This is how cycles of bad leadership replicate themselves, decade after decade.

I decided I wasn’t going to be part of that cycle. I chose to lead differently — to put people first, to build trust, to actually care about the humans behind the job titles. But here’s the thing: that kind of leadership wasn’t championed. It wasn’t rewarded. In fact, it was often discouraged. Even as my team thrived and found success, I watched other teams spiral downward under outdated, anti-human, anti-growth approaches — and the system still rewarded the same ineffective leadership models that were clearly failing. That model still exists today.

That experience became the seed for what I do now. It’s why I created Rebel Leadership — to change the way we lead and, ultimately, to change the world of work. To challenge the outdated norms that keep people stuck, and to empower leaders to build environments that are human-centered, growth-oriented, and deeply effective.

Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s this: leadership done right doesn’t just transform teams — it transforms people. And that’s the work I’ve committed my life to.

Maria , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

For those who may not know me yet, I’m Maria DeLorenzis Reyes — a leadership coach, speaker, and CEO/Founder of Training Innovations and MDR Brands. My entire career has been about helping people and organizations grow, not just in performance, but in the way they connect, belong, and lead. Training Innovations and MDR Brands are two companies I built around a belief that leadership isn’t about titles or hierarchy — it’s about creating spaces where people belong, grow, and do the best work of their lives.

My path here wasn’t linear. I spent years inside corporate America — product management, research, client service — learning firsthand how leadership shapes everything: culture, performance, innovation, even retention. Along the way, I noticed something troubling. Most leaders weren’t ineffective because they didn’t care; they were ineffective because they’d never been shown another way. They’d been promoted for being good at their jobs, not for knowing how to lead humans — and so they replicated what they’d seen before, even when it didn’t work.

After realizing I was unfulfilled with 20 years in the corporate grind, I crafted a plan to start my own venture. In 2007, I launched Training Innovations to help leaders and companies break that ineffective cycle. The realization that leadership was broken that I learned early in my career, drove me to create what I now call Rebel Leadership — a human-centered approach to leading that challenges the norms still rooted in corporate culture. My mission is to help leaders create environments where people actually thrive, not just survive; where belonging drives performance and transformation is possible every day.

Over the years, we’ve partnered with more than 1,600 companies and trained over 200,000 people — from frontline supervisors stepping into leadership for the first time to seasoned executives scaling multi-billion-dollar organizations. Our services aren’t “off-the-shelf”; every program is tailored to the challenges our clients are facing, whether that’s strengthening emotional intelligence, navigating conflict, building high-performing teams, or redesigning systems and processes to scale sustainably.

I’ve also expanded beyond traditional corporate training through MDR Brands, where I create programs and digital tools for entrepreneurs and individuals who want to grow without waiting for permission from their employer. My program, The Scale Factor Formula, is designed for leaders who are ready to multiply their reach and impact while staying true to their values and people.

What I think sets my work apart is that it’s deeply human. I blend practical business strategy with coaching, neuroscience, and behavioral tools like NLP, Hypnosis, and TimeLine Therapy when needed which help create breakthroughs. My focus is on results, yes — but also on the people creating those results. Because when leaders feel connected and supported, their teams flourish, and companies experience the kind of transformation that lasts.

I’m proud of a lot in my career — from the thousands of leaders I’ve trained to the companies I’ve helped transform — but what I’m most proud of is seeing the ripple effect. It’s not just about the leader sitting in the training room — it’s about the team that feels seen for the first time, the company culture that starts to shift, and the family members who feel the difference when someone comes home less burned out and more fulfilled. When one leader decides to lead differently, it doesn’t just change their team; it changes their company, their family, and often their community. That’s the real legacy of this work.

Through my podcast and TV series, Finding the Upside, and events like Revive and Thrive, I keep exploring these ideas — sharing real stories of transformation, challenging outdated norms, and sparking conversations about the future of leadership and work.

If you take anything away about me and my brand, I hope it’s this: I believe transformation is always possible — and it’s waiting on the other side of implementation. Whether through my trainings, podcast, or speaking, my goal is to inspire leaders to abandon outdated models, embrace the rebel in themselves, and create cultures where people feel they belong, perform at their best, and grow beyond what they thought possible. It all starts with one leader willing to do things differently.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the biggest pivots of my life came at a moment I didn’t plan for — and honestly, didn’t want at that time.
I had built my career as a senior executive in corporate, and I had a very clear plan: I was going to build my business on the side until it matched my corporate salary, and then I’d make the leap. That was written right into my business plan. But life, as it tends to do, had other ideas.

At the start of the economic downturn, like so many other senior executives, I found myself on the chopping block. Companies were slashing costs, and experienced leaders with higher salaries were being replaced with less experienced people at half the pay. Overnight, I went from a carefully plotted exit strategy to no salary, no corporate safety net, and an economy in free fall.

My original business idea wasn’t even training and leadership development — it was real estate development. My plan was to buy and manage properties, turn them around for profit, and eventually move into residential and commercial development. But this was 2008. The real estate market had tanked. The stock market crashed. Big banks were failing from subprime lending. Lending dried up overnight. And without a salary to show, I couldn’t get a loan. No capital. No credit. No path forward for the plan I’d spent the last year building.
So I pivoted.

Out of necessity, I started doing contract training work. A business based in training and consulting wasn’t part of my original vision — but it was where my skills and relationships opened doors. What began as a stopgap quickly revealed itself to be a calling. That was the seed of what would eventually become Training Innovations.

Looking back, that forced pivot was the first of many. In the 18 years since starting my company, I’ve had to pivot again and again — through market shifts, client downturns, industry changes, fierce competition, and even a global pandemic. Each time, I’ve learned to adapt quickly, stay close to market signals, and, most importantly, diversify — building multiple streams of services and offerings so we’re never too dependent on any one client, industry, or economic cycle.

That ability to pivot — and to plan for the what-ifs — has been one of the biggest reasons we’ve sustained and grown over nearly two decades. It’s also something I now teach my clients: how to build a business and leadership strategy that’s agile, resilient, and prepared for inevitable change. Because change is coming — but with the right mindset and structure, it doesn’t have to take you down. It can actually open doors to your next chapter.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

For the first 13 years of my business, every single client came through referrals. I didn’t do formal advertising, I didn’t have social media marketing — I didn’t even really have an online presence. And honestly, I consider that a huge blessing. There’s no higher compliment than having a client trust you enough to recommend you to another company. That trust was what allowed me to scale my business from zero to seven figures — all through word-of-mouth.

But just before the pandemic, I started to feel this pull to expand. The work we did was so bespoke — every training program custom-built to the client — and while that was a differentiator, it also meant I was limited by my own capacity and the capacity of my subject-matter experts. I wanted to create ways to serve more people, diversify our offerings, and meet leaders where they were — whether they needed deep-dive consulting or more accessible training solutions.

The timing was almost ironic. When COVID hit and the world shut down, the in-person work I had always relied on stopped overnight. Although we had done our fair share of webinars prior to that, suddenly Zoom became the norm — and that shift allowed me to see what was possible in terms of reaching people all over the globe. It opened my eyes to new ways of delivering impact that weren’t bound by geography or travel schedules.

With that time and space, I dove into learning what I didn’t know. Digital marketing had evolved dramatically, and I had to start from scratch: experimenting, learning, making mistakes, and slowly building the skills and team I needed to bring my vision online.

Coming out of the pandemic, that investment paid off. Referrals are still my strongest source of new business — and I’m incredibly proud of that — but now I’ve layered in the ability to scale. We’ve built a tiered menu of services that allows us to work with leaders and companies of all sizes, budgets, and timelines, while still maintaining the high-touch approach that got us here in the first place.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mytraininginnovations.com and www.mariadr.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themariadr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MariaDeLorenzisReyes/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariadelorenzisreyes/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_ribotxbilLUe2ldKgg3w

Image Credits

Craig Toron/Toron Photography
Marina Fridlyand/Reflection Studio
Amy Allmand/Amy Allmand Photography