Melissa Maloney
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Expert Contributor | She Owns Success
Meet The Expert
Melissa Maloney
With more than 25 years of executive leadership experience, Melissa has built her career at the intersection of business strategy and human behaviour. She specializes in sales performance, change execution, and leadership development. As the co-developer of Herd Intelligence, helping workplaces identify the invisible barriers that sabotage execution.
Melissa is also the author of The Happy Leader (2026), a leadership fable on building high-performing, resilient teams, and Co-Founder of All Women LEAD, a national initiative advancing women in leadership. A sought-after speaker, she is known for translating complex leadership concepts into practical insights that actually stick.
Professional Background & Training
- 25 years in Senior Leadership and Strategy
- 25 Years in Sales, Operations Leadership, driving $25MIL/month budgets
- 5 years supporting entrepreneurship with start-up and scaling growth
- International Skills Development and Capacity Building
- Host the Largest Women’s Leadership and Empowerment event in SWO
- Co-Active Coaching Certification
- Solutions Focused Coaching Certification
- EQi and EQ360 certification
What I'm Known For
Philosophy
Work is not just what we do. It is where we spend the majority of our lives, and for most people, it is where they most consistently experience the gap between who they are capable of being and who the environment actually allows them to be.
I have spent years watching talented, committed professionals operate below their potential, not because they lacked skill or drive, but because nobody had ever given them the language to understand what was happening inside them or around them. They were drifting without knowing it was a choice. They were holding their teams together while quietly coming apart. They were sitting on decades of knowledge with no one asking for it.
I believe that performance is not a technical problem. It is a human one. I believe that the single most consequential investment any organization can make is in understanding the people already inside it, not replacing them, not managing around them, but actually seeing them.
I believe that self-awareness is not a soft skill. It is the technical skill that determines whether every other skill you have actually works when the pressure is real. I believe in the herd, not as a metaphor but as a model. The most sophisticated collective intelligence in the natural world does not operate through hierarchy or fear. It operates through awareness, trust, and the deliberate contribution of every member to the movement of the whole.
That is what Grounded looks like. That is what Guiding makes possible.
The work we do is not about making people better at their jobs.
It is about giving people back the version of themselves they came here to be.