Mara Voss

№ 01 — The Claim Executive coaching · operators in the arena

not comfort · not consensus · not applause

For founders, GMs, and presidents — people whose decisions have witnesses. I don’t soften the picture. I sharpen it.

№ 02

You, possibly

Situations I coach through: the board is split; the promotion exposed you; your cofounder went quiet; the numbers turned in March; everyone agrees with you now; the succession clock is loud; you inherited a team you didn’t pick; the activist letter arrived Tuesday; they clapped and you felt nothing; your calendar runs you; the merger doubled your job; there is no one inside you can tell.

If one of these reads like your Tuesday, keep going. Hover to hold a line still.Read them slowly.

№ 03

The Work

Three formats. One posture: I work for the version of you that has to walk back in.

Format I — weekly, standing

The Corner

Between rounds, every fighter has a corner. This one is yours.

A standing fifty minutes, every week, with the one person in your professional life who holds no stake in your comfort. We work the current fight: the decision you keep deferring, the conversation you keep rescheduling, the number you don’t say out loud. Nothing performative survives fifty minutes a week for a year.

Cadence
Weekly · 50 min
Term
Ongoing, renewed quarterly
Between
Direct line, 24-hr reply
Held
Twelve seats, total

Format II — ninety days, fixed

The Ascent

For a climb with a name: new seat, turnaround, first year at altitude.

Ninety days against a defined summit. Week one, we map the terrain — stakeholders, weather, the routes that look safe and aren’t. Then we climb in weekly pitches with a fixed review at day forty-five. You arrive installed, not just appointed.

Cadence
Weekly + day-45 review
Term
90 days, fixed
Artifact
A written map you keep
Starts
First Monday, monthly

Format III — situational

The War Room

When the situation has a name and a deadline.

A split board. A succession fight. A resignation you didn’t see coming and a press cycle that did. I clear the week and we build the room: positions, sequence, the sentence you will actually say. Then you go say it.

Cadence
Daily, until it’s done
Term
Days, not months
Entry
Within 48 hours
Discretion
Absolute
№ 04 — The Credo 01 / 05

Feedback got polite
the day you got power.

Your title edits
every sentence you hear.

Unsaid things don’t
dissolve. They drop.

I am not on your payroll.
That is the point.

We rehearse the hard conversation
until it is just a conversation.
Then you go back in.

№ 05

The Coach

Mara Voss

Operator first · coach since 2014

COO of Meridian Freight through the 2009 trough and the turnaround that followed; before that, seven years running P&Ls nobody else wanted. She has sat in the seat, missed the quarter, made the cut, and taken the five a.m. call.

Three hundred-odd engagements since: founders through exits, general managers through ownership changes, presidents through their first board fight. Professional Certified Coach, ICF; trained at the Hudson Institute of Coaching. Confidences kept: all of them.

Based in Chicago. Works by wire everywhere. Reads more than she posts.

12years in operating seats
300+engagements since 2014
0confidences broken