Your Leadership and Resilience Trainer!

Hi! I’m Mary Polanco, a Leadership and Personal Growth Consultant and Trainer. I have two great passions in life; leadership and wellbeing. I first found a passion for leadership during my 23-year career in the U.S. Air Force. As an instructor for the service’s leadership school, I became enamored with the complexity of leading others, which inspired me to complete my graduate degree in Strategic Leadership and currently pursue my Doctorate in the Psychology of Leadership from William James College. During the latter portion of my career, I was introduced to the importance of wellbeing when I hit maximum burnout from taking on entirely too much while being a mother to two small children and the senior leader in my organization. It was through my healing journey back, that I realized the impact between our commitment to self-health and its connection to leading effectively.

I started Live and Lead Well, LLC because I saw a gap in conventional Leadership Training.
Oftentimes, the focus on how to grow as a leader is done through training steeped solely in caring for others; courses such as leading compassionately and building healthy team dynamics. While these concepts are an absolute necessity to our leadership development, the foundation of personal development is often overlooked. When we revector our training efforts to increase the focus on our own self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and overall wellness, we will truly show up as the best version of the leader we aim to be.