Founder and Managing Director

Mary is Context’s founder. She combines her role as managing director with select client engagements, innovative projects in leadership development, and university teaching.

Mary’s work with executive leadership teams increases their effectiveness in the midst of escalating complexity. She is known for delivering high-impact people and change strategies that evolve leadership cultures and align capabilities with business needs. Her leadership designs have been named best practice in multinational corporations, profiled by the US based Information Management Forum and in Life Science Leader. Mary also facilitates multi-stakeholder collaborations on global challenges, most recently The Climate Gathering in Europe. In 2014, she initiated the Burren Executive Leadership Retreat, an annual gathering in Ireland of global leaders who are navigating complex systems.

Mary’s is a contributor to strategy+business magazine and The Change Handbook: Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems, The Practitioner’s Handbook of Team Coaching (2019) and Advances in Presencing (forthcoming).  She recently presented at the World Institute for Action Learning, the MaRS Discovery District, The Conference Board of Canada, and the Society for Organizational Learning.

Mary holds an MA in Organizational Leadership and Learning, a BA in Psycholinguistics, and a Diploma in Counselling. She is an executive coach (ACTP) qualified to work with a variety of development-based assessments. She teaches in the Strategic Leadership Advanced program at the University of Toronto, where she also regularly works with delegations from China.

Mary Stacey in the Distinctive Women Magazine