Marie Szuts

Executive Coach
Former VP of People, Figma

Marie Szuts is a leadership coach and culture strategist who brings innate curiosity and boundless enthusiasm to unlocking human potential. Trained as a medieval historian at Yale University where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Marie learned to think across disciplines and see patterns in complex systems.

Early in her career, she combined her love of storytelling and community in food journalism, leading publications on Italian cuisine and global spicy foods. She then joined an ed-tech startup as an early employee, guiding content and engineering teams to reinvent digital textbooks. In 2019, Marie became Head of People at Figma, scaling talent systems through hypergrowth by building mentorship programs, transparent career pathways, and bias-minimizing hiring practices that fueled Figma’s retention success.

Today, Marie runs her own coaching and consulting practice and serves as a founding partner at Vibrancy, advising mission-driven teams from Stanford researchers to Series A startups on designing equitable, scalable talent ecosystems. She has served over a decade on the board of a national music nonprofit. 

The Politics of Leadership

Marie and Addisu Demissie were classmates at Yale, and at Responsive Conference 2025, she joins him to explore political storytelling, cultural transformation, and leadership amidst change.