Maria is originally from Italy but has lived in the UK for over 30 years and lives in London with her husband and two daughters. Maria considers herself a disabled person and is severely deaf, and uses captioning, lipreading and other adjustments to communicate with others. She is an award-winning motivational speaker on disability, diversity and inclusion, and author of a novel on disability and intersectional inclusion published in 2022 in Italy.

She’s currently the Senior Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Manager for the workforce at High Speed Two Ltd (HS2). She led HS2 to be the first organisation to achieve Platinum Status on Clear Assured EDI Accreditation in 2019. This year Maria and EDI stakeholders at HS2 crafted and launched the organisation’s Accessibility Strategy, which is unique in construction and engineering industries. Maria advises on strategic planning and delivering EDI goals, developing internal and external partnerships, training frontline staff, senior managers and executives, and speaking at large events.

Maria also manages HS2’s reverse mentoring programme and works closely with human resources teams to ensure that the organisation recruits and retains their people inclusively through best practice.

Maria is a qualified disability access advisor with 15 years’ experience in accessibility and design of the built environment, train stations and train design. Maria delivers equality analysis and impact assessments of policies, procedures, programmes and data.

Maria is currently learning British Sign Language (BSL) as her third language. Maria’s aspiration is to help destigmatise “disability”.