We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Maria Grillo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Maria below.

Maria , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I have always been an entrepreneurial thinker. Much of that, I think, comes from being the daughter of an Italian immigrant. My dad and his family came to the United States without knowing any English and built a life here from scratch after his dad died from Tuberculosis.

He always spoke to me about the importance of opportunity, of taking care of people – especially the ones that take care of you – and learning from others smarter than you. My mom on the other hand, nurtured my instinctual appetite for wonder, creative self-expression and confidence to make my own choices. As the youngest and only daughter of three, I was naturally inclined to observe people dynamics in a way that might not have come as easy to me otherwise.

Seeking ways to balance a healthy sense of aspiration and pragmatism is in my blood.

Professionally, this drew me to the creative world of Advertising/Marketing where I eventually ascended into the role of Vice President Client Experience and Cultural Engagement. It was a newly designed position that I co-authored with my leadership team which afforded me the opportunity to blend my skills of account management, cross-functional collaboration, and organizational behavior.

On one crisp, yet sunny and warm, morning in November 2022 (the kind we live for here in Chicago), I was having coffee with a prior colleague who I admired. We were discussing what might be next for me after I was laid off from work as part of a national reduction in workforce. His support was so effusive that we spoke at length about the potential pathways I might consider next.

Whatever it was, he encouraged, I would be successful because of who I am.

I walked back to the train afterwards with a skip in my step – what if now is the time I’m meant to be an actual entrepreneur rather than just an entrepreneurial thinker?

Just as that question permeated throughout my body, I saw a sign for the French Market in front of me –

Bread.

Crunchy Bread.

Dad always said you could judge the quality of an Italian restaurant by the quality of its bread…the same is true for people, I thought.

I pulled on the thread of that thought even further –

What if I created a company that used the metaphor of Crunchy Bread to make it easier for individuals, teams and workplaces to creatively design for quality living on their terms?

The ideas poured out of me quicker than I could write them down while I was on the train.

By the time I got home, I walked into the family room where my partner was sitting and emphatically blurted out the company name, a verbal sketch of my services, and the impact I would strive to make.

We both knew that this was the way.

I bought the website domain for Crunchy Bread Culture Studio that same day and haven’t looked back since.

Maria , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We’re a new genre of creative consulting which combines marketing and organizational business psychology.

Crunchy Bread Culture Studio is a practice committed to observational design by solving with our clients rather than talking at them. We specialize in personal storytelling, in-team culture experience, and workplace strategy with the goal of facilitating creative freedom so that people can lead a quality life without sacrificing who they are.

Our services are best paired with people across industries and roles who value emotional intelligence, creative problem solving and real collaboration to drive innovation.

Designing custom programs or paid speaking engagements tailored to our clients’ needs is our crunchy bread and butter.

If you want to foster quality living in your own life or on behalf of those you lead…we would love to partner with you. Ask about our Crostini if you’d like to explore just a taste of what we can achieve together.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Family is everything in Italian culture. It’s a mindset I was raised on, and one that I took to heart in just about every decision I made as I grew up. My priorities weren’t shaped out of obligation either – I wholeheartedly loved the realness that came from the raw connection I had with my family. Chaos and all.

Even though I knew death was a natural part of the human experience, I was certain that the anchoring love of my parents was a sure bet. I’d have them both around until I was at least in my 50’s or 60’s I naively thought.

Then, just before my 26th birthday, I received a call from my dad –

“My heart is no good,” he said through tears.

We didn’t know it then, but March 2015 marked the beginning of a series of complex health complications that would lead to his eventual terminal illness in September 2016. He was 61 years old with so many unmet family memories to build ahead of him.

After he died, I was desperately clinging onto the career and reputation I had built.

The only problem was, a big part of me died with him, too.

Internally, I was a shell of myself, trapped in a state of deep depression but on the outside, I wore the façade of perseverance well. Being a person committed to high-performance, excellence, and serving others was all I knew.

More than a year after his passing, I could no longer pretend that I was okay.

It became necessary for me to own the truth of my experience – out loud. For whatever reason, the thought of hiding in silence was simply no longer an option for me.

I requested a mental health leave from work – something that was unheard of at the time – and shared with my team, clients, and agency partners my motives for doing so.

The time away allowed me to fully navigate the intense waves of PTSD, depression, anxiety and grief that I was experiencing with support from my doctors and family.

After several months away from work, I returned with a renewed sense of purpose which included a refreshed, integrated personal and professional identity. One that was committed to high-performance, excellence and serving others – but – also included understanding, communicating and serving my own needs, too.

In the spring of 2018, I became the first employee to pitch, design, and co-lead mental health inclusion programming at my global advertising agency. In the years following, I fortified my reputation as a business leader who prioritized the in-team culture experience just as much as client growth.

I was later recruited by a leading global communications agency to co-lead their Mental Health Employee Resource Group (ERG) while playing a key leadership role in standing up their largest cross-functional, cross-agency account with a focus on team and workplace culture development.

I felt such an alignment with where I was headed, and how much it celebrated who I was and where I imagined I could add the most value in this world, that I went back to school for Industrial/Organizational Business Psychology with a focus on Organizational Behavior, Structure, and Culture.

Within my larger story of building resilience, includes a series of wounds that I once thought would never be healed held together by the belief that if I just held it together long enough, a quality life worth boldly living on my terms would emerge.

Little did I know that Crunchy Bread Culture Studio was patiently waiting on the other side.

My experiences taught me that real care in life and business is only sustained when self-advocacy is prioritized. This perspective has ushered in a new way of creative thinking and living that I didn’t know possible.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn was that family is the only way of experiencing true community.

Though my mom remains as my greatest confidant who champions my dreams and absorbs my hardships as her own, I used to call my maternal grandma my therapist. Affectionately known as “my girl” among everyone that knew the closeness of our relationship. She was an incredible listener who received my emotions, struggles and curiosities with her whole heart and mind. She died nearly three years after my dad.

It was really through necessity that I dedicated myself to examining what family means, what I might be missing by having such a narrow view, and how I might be able to emulate the best parts of my family with other people inside and outside of work.

I concluded that designing a multifaceted support system is critical to reaching towards the fullest expression of who you are.

Learning how to be vulnerable while still maintaining a healthy guard has been quite the challenge. There’s risk involved in intentionally sharing more of yourself – your needs, your emotions, your ambitions – with people that might not have your best interest at heart.

In fact, I’ve learned quite a few hard lessons this way. But the reality is that the reward of letting others in is so unbelievably worth it. We cannot shoulder the burdens of living on our own, nor can we grow into our potential without the guidance of those that want to rally on our behalf. The challenge is that we don’t know who those people are until we genuinely let them into our inner world.

Now, when I partner with my clients on defining, clarifying and conveying who they are and where they want to go, we invest in orchestrating how their values come to life in action and we map them to their existing support system so that they can activate their resources strategically. It is an immense privilege and joy to be considered as a part of that system.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://crunchybreadculturestudio.com
• Instagram: @crunchybreadculturestudio
• Linkedin: @crunchybreadculturestudio
• Other: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariagrillo/

Image Credits

Photography: Chicago Andrea Creative