Maria Carson

Maria is a senior researcher for MaST Theatre and Film and works as a consultant and trainer for MaST International.

She speaks fluent French, Dutch and Portuguese as well as English and started working for MaST in 2005.

Career background

Maria read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University where she got a BA Hons and an MA. She also has a propadeause in Law from Leiden University.

Maria worked as a statistician in the Inflation department of the Office of National Statistics and as a researcher for the European Commission where she worked on developing methods of homogenising inflation measures across the European Union and contributed to "Panorama Industries", an annual Eurostat publication providing statistics on European businesses.

Maria managed a software development company for two years and is a property developer in Portugal. She has worked as a consultant for numerous companies and events such as Expo 98 and, in the private sector, 5th Avenue Inc. venture capitalists and Propellor Marketing Research.

Other qualifications and experience

Maria also trained as an actor at Mountview Academy. Her acting work includes numerous plays and she has been employed as an actor in the Netherlands, Austria, France, Luxembourg and Portugal. She also appears in eight short films and a feature film. Maria presented "Talk Portuguese", a series of language programmes for the BBC and recorded the "Kickstart your Portuguese" audio courses for the BBC.

She was the voice in commercials for DELL, Illy Communications, Nicorette, Fatmob, Purina Hondensnacks, Oracle, Microsoft, British Airways Executive Club and several documentaries and product information tapes.

Maria became involved in the Learning and Development World as an actor doing role play, forum theatre and other forms of interactive theatre. Struck by the effectiveness of such an engaging form of training, she decided to pursue a career as a freelance facilitator/researcher for theatre based Training and initially joined MaST Theatre and film in that capacity

Specialist fields

• Using theatre techniques in business
• Facilitation
• Research and Development
• Management Development
• Project Management

Example projects

• Designer, project manager and trainer for a 5 day graduate programme for 200 analysts joining HSBC, covering networking skills, communication skills, influencing skills, presentation skills, teamwork conflict management and cultural awareness.
• Designer and trainer for four Global training programmes over three years to ABN Amro on selling skills, project management skills, influencing skills, teambuilding, category management, change and conflict management.
• Designer and co–ordinator for a series of workshops on diversity, teambuilding, communication skills and dealing with conflict for junior staff and managers at Metroline.
• Featured in a Diversity Awareness training video for Sarah Lee and a customer services training video for AstraZeneca.
• Trainer in a series of interviewing skills workshops for Merrill Lynch.