Soul of Purpose
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Soul of Purpose
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ABOUT ME

 

Hi, I’m Marilena.


The thread running through my work has always been the same:
helping people navigate complexity while strengthening clarity, trust, co-creation and momentum.


Over the years, people I’ve worked with often describe me as someone who brings calm thinking into chaotic situations — someone who listens deeply, asks the questions that uncover what really matters, and helps leaders structure their thinking when everything around them feels fast and uncertain.


That ability to hold both the human and systemic sides of change is what shapes the work I do today.


I work with founders and leadership teams navigating one of the most demanding moments in a company’s life: the transition from early startup momentum to real scale - SERIES A SCALING!


Series A is exciting.
It’s also a company’s first real transformation.


Everything that got you here worked — founder instinct, speed, improvisation, tight teams moving quickly together.

But as the company grows, the system that supported that early success begins to stretch.


  • Decisions become heavier.
  • New leaders step in.
  • Teams grow faster than shared understanding.


What once worked intuitively now needs to evolve into something that can support scale.


Helping founders and leadership teams navigate that transition consciously is the work I do.


My Path to This Work


My career has been spent inside fast-growing organisations, working at the intersection of product, leadership, and organisational change.


I began as a startup founder, learning first-hand what it takes to build something with limited resources, move quickly, and stay close to customers.


From there, I joined a venture clienting SaaS company and consultancy where I worked with multinational organisations such as BSH, LG Electronics, Miele, STIHL, and Infineon on innovation and transformation initiatives.


Later, I moved into the product organisation and became Head of Product, designing systems and tools that helped organisations systematically discover, test, and implement new solutions.


Across these roles — startup, consulting, and product leadership — I repeatedly saw the same pattern:


Strong ideas and strong growth rarely fail because the strategy is wrong.

They struggle because the organisation hasn’t evolved with the scale of the ambition.


That insight shaped the work I do today.


What Shaped My Perspective


Some of the most important lessons behind my work didn’t come from frameworks. They came from experience!


I know what it means to be ambitious enough to push beyond your limits and ignore the signals that something isn’t sustainable. I’ve experienced burnout and learned how difficult it is to fully recover once that line has been crossed.


That experience taught me something I carry into every organisation I work with:

Growth without awareness eventually extracts a cost from the people carrying it.


I’ve also seen what happens inside companies as they move from early-stage momentum into scale.


I’ve been part of startups with extraordinary early cultures — environments where a small group of people understood the product, the customers, and each other almost intuitively.


  • Then growth arrives.
  • New leaders join.
  • Structures are introduced.
  • Processes appear.
  • Rhythms change.


And suddenly tensions emerge that didn’t exist before.


I’ve seen founders struggle to delegate because letting go can feel like losing control.


I’ve seen leadership teams caught between protecting speed and introducing necessary structure.


And I’ve seen the friction that arises between early employees — who carry deep intuitive knowledge of the product and company — and new hires who bring strong professional expertise, processes, and discipline.


Both perspectives are valuable. But when that knowledge doesn’t integrate, it becomes what separates people instead of strengthening the organisation.

Scaling a company is not only an operational challenge.


It is a human and systemic transformation.


Helping organisations navigate that transition with clarity, trust, and awareness is the work I care most about.


How I Work


My approach combines three perspectives that are rarely brought together:


Startup operational experience
Understanding product, customers, and execution realities.


Leadership coaching
Supporting founders and leaders as they grow into new roles.


Transformational change practice
Designing systems and ways of working that people actually adopt.


I don’t work purely as a consultant or purely as a coach.


I step into the operational reality of the organisation — working with leadership teams as well as product, commercial, and delivery teams to simplify complexity and design structures that scale in practice, not theory.


Because real change only happens when people trust the system they are operating inside.


Background


  • 10+ years working inside startups and innovation-driven organisations
  • Former Head of Product and Key Account Management leader
  • Certified Leadership Coach
  • Professional training in Transformational Change Strategy
  • Ongoing study with the International School of Self-Awareness


Together these experiences shape how I approach growth:
not just as a business challenge, but as a human and organisational transformation.


A Final Note


Building a company is one of the most ambitious things a person can do.

The transition into scale is exhilarating — and often demanding in ways that few people talk about openly.


When leadership, culture, offerings, and processes evolve together, organisations unlock an entirely new level of capability.


Helping founders and teams navigate that transformation consciously is work I feel deeply privileged to do.

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