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Welcome to Her Success Story.

Women inspire me every single day. Their tenacity, wit, enthusiasm, power and grace have provided the world with amazing businesses that have transformed industries. Her Success Story is a podcast that allows these impactful and fascinating women to share their success journey with the world. Their triumphs, along with their failures. Their lessons, along with their leadership. And their determination to follow their dreams. Listen in each week as we talk to women in fashion, coaching, corporate, legal and so much more.

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  1. All Episodes
  2. Fitting In and Standing Out: Marja Fox on Diverse Career Pathways

Fitting In and Standing Out: Marja Fox on Diverse Career Pathways

Jul 13, 2026

This week, Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guest, Marja Fox. The two talk about the power of diverse backgrounds in management consulting, the realities of transitioning from corporate roles at McKinsey and Ecolab to entrepreneurship, and how Marja built her own consulting practice specializing in strategic facilitation for executive teams.


In this episode, we discuss:

  • How trial and error, plus finding a community of other entrepreneurs, helped Marja Fox learn to manage the cadence between delivery and infrastructure.

  • What it was like for Marja to join McKinsey with a science background and how the company purposefully sought out people with alternative professional degrees to bring diverse perspectives to client problems.

  • Why Marja believes you should recognize the value of your accrued experience, “you owe me for the years, not the hours”, and how this affects pricing and self-worth as a woman leader.

  • What strategies she uses to build a client pipeline and maintain discipline in business development, including mindset shifts from “selling” to helping former clients solve problems.

  • How Marja discovered her "source of distinctiveness" at McKinsey, focusing on problem-solving and deep intuition about people.

 

 Marja Fox

STRATEGIC FACILITATOR | EX-McKINSEY | PhD

Meet Marja Fox, owner of Marja Fox Consulting. Marja is a former Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company with broad strategy, business development, and commercial operations expertise across multiple industries. Before turning independent, she was a VP of Marketing and Strategy & Business Development at Ecolab, responsible for growth strategy, innovation, new product launches, sales support, and marketing communications of a$1B growth business. As an independent consultant, she focuses on strategy and facilitation. She has found that client service - helping them succeed - is where her heart is; it’s what gets her up in the morning. Marja's education is in the sciences. She holds a BS in Chemistry from Harvey Mudd College and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She brings her analytical background and ongoing drive to understand how things work to every project.

 

Social Media & Contact

Email: marja@mfoxconsult.com

 Website: www.marjafox.com 

 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/marjafox/ 

 YouTube: youtube.com/@marjafox Based in Minneapolis, MN