Leadership in a World New to the Concept of Hospitality – A Conversation with Maria DeLorenzis Reyes
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 8
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 15
Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought-after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally.
Being able to support thought leaders in using their voices for impact is a privilege, and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Maria DeLorenzis Reyes to discuss her leadership style and how it might surprise you.
Maria is an executive leadership coach who empowers CEOs and leaders to challenge conventional corporate norms, fostering cultures of belonging and high performance. Unlike traditional consultants, she goes against the grain to enhance team connectivity and boost performance beyond expectations. Her extensive knowledge and speaking skills make her a sought-after coach, consultant, and speaker. She is the creator and host of the "Finding the Upside" podcast and TV series. As CEO and Founder of Training Innovations and MDR Brands, Maria has transformed thousands of businesses across eight sectors, worked with over 1600 companies, delivered over 5800 presentations, and trained more than 200,000 people. Her expertise includes leadership, training, product management, client service, organizational efficiency, and business process optimization. She is a Certified Personal Empowerment Coach (PECC), a Master Level Certified NLP Coach, and a Master Practitioner of Hypnosis and TimeLine Therapy (TLT).
Maria, you are known for teaching companies leadership, belonging, and inclusion. What has changed recently in your mind, and is this still a relevant conversation in the workplace?
Leadership has always been a purpose-driven topic for me to teach and coach others on. Over the last five years, I’ve done extensive work aligning my personal values, who I am and what I stand for, with my brand and my work. This process has revealed the deeper passion behind why I do this work and the foundation of strength that runs through everything I create. Connectedness is the natural strength I lead with in every aspect of my life, my work, my identity, and my spirit. It fuels the meaning and impact I want to bring, creating spaces of belonging for everyone. While this has always been present, I now approach it with greater awareness and intention, which has allowed me to fully lean into it.
That said, the current climate has created pushback against inclusion and even against language that reflects it. This makes it all the more important to lead with these values and resist the pressure to revert to outdated and flawed models of leadership. These very models have produced the damaging conditions our society continues to suffer from. The effort to pull us backward, away from connectedness, community, and empathy, the very tenets that foster belonging and inclusion, is both shortsighted and misguided. It stems from a desire to maintain control over others, which is exactly what those advancing this agenda fear losing. Unfortunately, this ingrained and limiting belief has influenced our business, corporate, and societal cultures for far too long. Without deliberate pushback, we risk losing the progress we have fought so hard to achieve in recent decades.
Your Oxford Talk is about hospitality and how it’s directly related to belonging. How did you come to this, and why is this concept not more obviously practiced?
The Oxford Talk was such an important moment for me because it allowed me to put words around what inclusion and belonging look like in practice. Using hospitality as the foundation of belonging and inclusion was a way to make it understandable and actionable to people. This was important as people seemed to struggle with those concepts, which felt complex and often elusive. I’ve lived and taught this concept for years, that hospitality is the foundation of belonging and inclusion.
Hospitality isn’t just about welcoming someone into your home or offering them a drink. At its core, it’s about how we make others feel seen, valued, and cared for. It’s a practice of extending humanity to one another, and that is the very heart of belonging.
I came to this realization through both my personal and professional journey. In every space, whether I was leading, coaching, or building culture, I noticed that people thrived when they felt truly welcomed and safe. Hospitality is that first act of saying, “You matter. You belong here.” And when you lead from that place, everything else, performance, innovation, and collaboration, flows naturally.
As for why it isn’t more obviously practiced, I think it’s because so many leadership models have been built on control, hierarchy, and productivity over people. Hospitality requires a shift in mindset. It’s not about power, it’s about presence. It’s simple, but it’s radical because it challenges those outdated norms and models that don’t work. That’s why I speak about it so intentionally. Hospitality is not just being nice, it’s part of what I call being a rebel leader, and it’s a necessity if we want to create workplaces and communities where people can truly belong.
What is currently missing in the leadership space?
What’s missing in the leadership space right now is soul. Too much of leadership has been built on outdated models of control and hierarchy, which strip away humanity. The result is that leadership is reduced to strategy, productivity, or bottom-line results, when in reality leadership is about people. And people thrive when they feel connected, valued, and included.
True leadership is not about power over people, it’s about creating spaces where people feel safe, connected, and valued. That’s what allows organizations to thrive and cultures to sustain progress. What’s missing isn’t another framework or model, it’s the courage to lead from these timeless human principles, to make them visible and intentional in how we build, work, and live together.
Whether I’m interviewing leaders, changemakers, or people working for them, the conversation always circles back to the same truth, what’s missing is leadership that prioritizes humanity over control, belonging over exclusion, and purpose over power.
What is needed is not more models or strategies, it’s the conscious and intentional practice of leading with hospitality, empathy, and inclusion. That’s what allows us to build cultures where people truly belong, and it’s the message I’ve been committed to sharing across every talk, podcast, and publication I’ve delivered.
And you are doing a great job at this commitment. How does your leadership style differ from others, and why is this important?
Like I touched on above, my leadership style is what I call Rebel Leadership. It differs from traditional models because I don’t lead from control, hierarchy, or outdated power structures. I lead from connectedness and belonging. I’ve learned that when people feel truly seen, safe, and valued, that’s when they perform at their best and when organizations thrive.
What makes this “rebellious” is that it pushes back against the flawed models of leadership that still dominate business and society, the ones rooted in fear, exclusion, and command-and-control thinking. Instead, I center humanity, empathy, and inclusion as the non-negotiables of leadership. That means I prioritize culture as much as performance, presence as much as productivity, and purpose as much as profit.
This is important because the old models are breaking us. They’ve created disengagement, burnout, and environments where people don’t feel like they belong. And it’s the complete opposite of the outcomes business leaders want. Rebel Leadership calls us back to a different way, one that is conscious, intentional, and grounded in the timeless truth that leadership is about people first. When we lead this way, we don’t just hit goals, we create workplaces and communities that are sustainable, innovative, and deeply human.
Tricia Brouk, Founder of The Big Talk Academy
Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally. She produced TEDxLincolnSquare in New York City and is the founder of The Big Talk Academy. Tricia’s book, The Influential Voice: Saying What You Mean for Lasting Legacy, was a 1 New Release on Amazon in December 2020. Big Stages, the documentary featuring her work with speakers premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in October of 2023 and her most recent love is the new publishing house she founded, The Big Talk Press.
