Mariana Atencio

Everyone now has the same AI, the same data, the same tools. What separates you is whether people trust you – and trust is the one thing that cannot be faked. It builds higher-performing teams, more sales, and more revenue.

Peabody Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Mariana Atencio had to earn it when the stakes were highest – from interviewing world leaders making impossible decisions, Pope Francis to the King of Spain, to the teams she led into hurricanes and earthquakes. That is the ask now, at every level: lead people into the unknown without having all the answers.

Mariana delivers her Architecture of Trust: three layers, built in sequence – Self-Trust, Team Trust, and Organizational Trust – grounded in two decades of reporting and ongoing research with her global community of 1.7 million.

Then the audience proves it. Mariana leads a sixty-second exercise built on NYU neuroscience. It becomes the moment they talk about for the rest of the event, and a practice that changes how they show up in any room.

Real trust is built at eye level. Through strategic storytelling, humor, and live interaction, participants leave ready to build trust with colleagues, stakeholders, and customers. Because when organizations are real, they thrive.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand trust as the most valuable currency in the age of AI.
• Build self-trust on evidence you can point to, not a pep talk.
• Earn others’ trust in 60 seconds – at eye level, not in your inbox.
• Make your purpose visible, so people believe in what you’re building.
• Convert trust into faster decisions, shorter sales cycles, and people who stay.
• Practice it live in an exercise the whole room does together.

Audience: Leadership and business audiences – executive teams, leadership summits, all-hands and all-company meetings, sales kickoffs, and leadership development or high-potential programs. Strongest in technology, financial services, professional services, and any organization operating under pressure, change, or public scrutiny. Built for everyone carrying responsibility, not only the people with “leader” in the title.