Maria Eugenia Arias
Senior Advisor and Associate Partner
Cambridge Family Enterprise Group
Maria Eugenia Arias is a senior advisor and associate partner at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise, a highly specialized international advisory firm serving family enterprises. Cambridge Advisors and Cambridge Institute for Family Enterprise, an education and research institute, are divisions of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, a global organization founded in 1989. It is devoted to helping families and ownership groups navigate the new economy and achieve multigenerational success for their families, enterprises, and financial wealth.
Ms. Arias brings unique experience in leadership development, coaching senior executives and teams, and advising family-owned businesses around the world and across a whole range of industries. She is passionate about supporting organizations to develop confident leaders as they face continuous disruption. Ms. Arias is known for creating environments in which people feel safe to learn and grow.
Ms. Arias spent 16 years at McKinsey & Company where she was a Senior Expert in the Organization Practice and held various roles in Firm Learning, including associate dean for partner learning. She managed the ‘senior coaching’ program for partners around the world and played a key role in developing knowledge on top team effectiveness. Ms. Arias was part of the team leading the Firm’s knowledge initiative on family-owned businesses considering her work with several family-owned conglomerates in South East Asia, India, Latin America and China. She continues to be involved with McKinsey & Company’s CEO Excellence Project.
Ms. Arias also was a faculty member at several leading business schools, including INSEAD (France), INCAE (Latin America) and Mount Eliza Business School (Australia). She spent a semester as a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School and has designed and delivered customised leadership programs for global institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Ms. Arias currently resides in Brisbane Australia She attended Barnard College/Columbia University, Stanford University and Yale University.
