MJ O’Leary is a global business executive and entrepreneur whose career has been defined by connecting business strategy with the people, culture, and capabilities required to deliver it. Over more than three decades, she has led sales, marketing, human resources, organizational transformation, and new business development, across complex organizations and entrepreneurial ventures.
Her experience spans publishing, education and EdTech, leadership development, and wellness, giving her an unusually broad perspective on the forces that enable organizations and their people to grow. Throughout her career, MJ has combined commercial discipline with a deeply held belief that sustainable performance depends on creating environments where people are equipped and inspired to succeed.
Today, MJ is the Founder and CEO of SHATTR, a leadership development company focused on preparing women to advance into senior leadership roles. SHATTR grew from MJ’s own experience spending decades in senior-level environments where major business decisions were made and she was often one of relatively few women in the room.
As an entrepreneur, she has translated that insight into a business that combines executive coaching, cohort-based leadership development and community, building and evolving its offerings around the leadership challenges women encounter as they move into more senior roles and what it takes to be ready for them.
MJ’s entrepreneurial leadership builds upon an extensive corporate career in which she held senior responsibility for both revenue generation and human capital strategy. At Wiley, a $1.8 billion global publishing organization with approximately 6,000 employees, she ultimately served as Executive Vice President of Human Resources, overseeing global HR and Corporate Communications across major international markets.
She transformed HR from a primarily operational function into an integrated strategic business partner, connecting talent, organizational design, leadership capability, and workforce strategy with the company’s broader growth priorities.
Her leadership encompassed enterprise talent and workforce strategy, organizational effectiveness, leadership development, talent acquisition, and the implementation of an integrated global HR information system.
MJ also played a significant role in helping Wiley navigate large-scale organizational change. During the company’s transition from traditional print publishing toward an increasingly digital business model, she led a global restructuring affecting approximately 25 percent of the workforce and introduced enterprise-wide change leadership training to support the transformation.
She partnered with C-suite executives and M&A teams on acquisitions, with particular responsibility for critical talent retention, and bringing the people and cultures of acquired companies into the organization. These experiences reinforced a perspective she carries into board and advisory environments today: transformation succeeds when strategy, leadership, organizational capability, and culture move together.
Before moving into Wiley’s top human resources leadership role, MJ spent a decade as Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing, demonstrating a breadth of operating experience that distinguishes her as an executive. During that period, the division for which she led global sales and marketing grew from $154 million to $314 million in annual revenue.
She played a central role in launching WileyPLUS, an integrated online learning environment that scaled to $55 million in revenue. She also helped transform custom publishing into a digital platform and founded a Business Solutions Group serving the for-profit education market, which generated approximately $40 million in revenue growth over seven years.
These accomplishments gave MJ firsthand experience in innovation, market development, digital disruption, product strategy, commercial execution, and organizational scaling.
Her earlier leadership roles further established her reputation for building teams and creating growth in demanding environments. At The Princeton Review, MJ developed the sales and marketing strategy for a startup K–12 online division, recruited leadership, established scalable systems and processes, and in its first full year of sales achieved 198 percent of the division’s revenue target while remaining within budget.
At Pearson Learning, she led a commercial turnaround that moved the business from a 28 percent decline to 10 percent growth in her first year, followed by 13 percent growth the next year without relying on new product launches. Those experiences reinforced her belief that meaningful performance improvement often begins with leadership, culture, clarity, and an organization’s ability to align its people around the market opportunity.
Following her corporate career, MJ co-founded WellnessMultiplied, bringing her strategy and leadership experience to the employee wellness sector. She conducted market analysis, developed strategic positioning and evidence-based educational curriculum, and delivered executive workshops and coaching. The work further reflected a theme that continues to influence her perspective career: high performance and well-being should not be competing objectives.
MJ is also an author having served as contributing author to the OpenStax College Success textbook. Today she writes regularly about leadership, career growth, and the intersection of professional success and personal well-being.
Her experience as an educator, executive coach, facilitator, and speaker complements her corporate leadership background, enabling her to translate complex business and human-capital concepts into practical ideas that individuals and organizations can put into action.
MJ’s leadership perspective is distinctly global. She has led multinational functions and teams and worked across markets throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, Canada, South America, and North America. Today, she is extending that experience as she plans for SHATTR’s expansion into Africa in 2027. That global perspective has strengthened her ability to navigate different markets, cultures, and organizational environments while balancing enterprise objectives with local realities.
MJ brings a broad range of experience to board and advisory service, including enterprise strategy, startup leadership, global sales and marketing, HR transformation, workforce planning, organizational effectiveness, change management, leadership development, strategic partnerships, and employee engagement.
As Wiley’s EVP of Human Resources, she worked closely with the company’s Board of Directors and its Executive Compensation and Development Committee on executive compensation, talent, and succession planning. She played an integral role in quarterly Board meetings, helping shape agendas, developing Board materials, preparing executives for presentations, attending the meetings, presenting to the Board, and facilitating portions of the discussion. This gave her extensive firsthand experience working with a public-company board and a deep understanding of the management-board relationship.
She currently serves as Chair of the Mountain Lakes Health Commission and Chair of the Women and Family Issues Committee for the League of Women Voters of New Jersey, and she serves as a Board Member of The Empathy Collective. Her previous board service as a Director has been in the nonprofit sector.
MJ earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Gettysburg College and has completed executive finance certifications through Dartmouth College and the University of Chicago. She holds the SHRM Senior Certified Professional credential, and is a certified Integrative Health & Wellness Coach. Her academic and professional credentials reinforce the multidisciplinary nature of her career.
At this stage of her career, MJ is open to board opportunities across a broad range of industries and markets. She is particularly drawn to organizations where she believes in the business, its leadership, and the value it creates for its customers, employees, communities and other stakeholders. She brings the perspective of an executive who has led growth and transformation while also building talent, leadership, culture, and organizational capability required to sustain performance.
Her value to a board is grounded in having personally led through commercial turnarounds, digital transformation, global restructuring, organizational redesign, executive development, M&A integration, and entrepreneurial company building. That combination enables her to contribute across strategy, growth, transformation, talent and organizational performance rather than through a single functional lens.
Outside of work, MJ treasures time with family and friends, whether it’s listening to live music by the water, taking a hike or spending a day on the slopes, playing mahjongg, or cooking with what she grows in her garden. She has a longstanding interest in health and well-being and a natural curiosity that keeps her reading, learning and exploring new ideas.
Character:
Integrity is central to how MJ leads and works with others. She brings candor, empathy, sound judgment, and accountability, along with a willingness to listen, challenge constructively, and make difficult decisions when needed. She values strong relationships, genuine connection, and workplaces where people can do great work and enjoy doing it together. She also believes there should be room for laughter, even when the work is serious.
Knowledge:
MJ brings three decades of executive experience spanning global sales, marketing, human resources, digital transformation, publishing, EdTech, leadership development, organizational effectiveness, and wellness. Her combination of commercial operating experience, human-capital expertise, entrepreneurial leadership, and international exposure, enables her to examine business challenges through multiple lenses.
Strategic:
MJ has repeatedly translated ambitious objectives into practical organizational action, whether turning around sales performance, scaling digital businesses, transforming a global HR organization, restructuring an enterprise, or building new ventures. She understands how to connect market opportunity, talent, culture, organizational design, and execution so that strategy can move from the boardroom and executive team to measurable results.
Communication:
MJ understands the critical role communication plays in leadership, particularly in building trust, creating alignment, and moving people and organizations forward. She excels at translating complex ideas into clear, actionable messages, listening carefully, communicating candidly, and adapting her approach across audiences, functions, and cultures. Her experience as a senior executive, coach, facilitator, and speaker has strengthened her ability to engage and influence stakeholders around a shared direction.
