Maria Zelkovskaya

Maria (Mariyka) Zelkovskaya is a Senior Executive specializing in business transformation with a strong focus on Data and Artificial Intelligence. With a career spanning over two decades, she has held strategic C-level and Board Advisory roles in global consumer goods leaders such as Danone and ABInBev, top-tier consultancy firms like EY, and fast-growing scale-ups.

Her professional philosophy centers on the belief that the bottleneck in AI adoption is rarely the technology itself; rather, it is the absence of clean processes, governance, clear ownership, and organizational readiness. She strongly advocates for fixing the operational foundation first, and then deploying AI where it creates durable, measurable business value.

Throughout her career, Maria has consistently delivered exceptional outcomes. Her track record includes building a data and analytics capability from scratch within Global Procurement—creating a pipeline with up to €20m in annual value capture—and executing a €1.3bn cost-efficiency program over three years. She has successfully designed and implemented target operating models across functions and geographies, ranging from digital transformation to AI-enabled workflows and global business data governance frameworks.

Holding educational credentials from MIT Sloan Executive Education, Maria is also a passionate Women-in-Tech and AI advocate. Alongside her corporate leadership, she has been a Guest Lecturer for EMBA programs for the past five years and is a sought-after speaker at international industry conferences.