Mary Foley

About Mary Foley

Have you ever done everything you were “supposed” to do and it still wasn’t enough – for your spouse, for your boss, or for your customers or clients? Mary Foley learned that good girl lesson and she’s here to help you learn it, too!

Mary is a keynote speaker, consultant, and author. A bodacious entrepreneur with a reputation for spunk and experience, Mary is the “Woman in Charge” of Bodacious! Ventures, a company dedicated to inspiring women to find the inner courage, knowledge, and tools to create the lives and careers they love! But, her life wasn’t always this way.

Fresh out of college with a hard-earned engineering degree from Virginia Tech, Mary had a BoMo® – a bodacious moment - when she realized she had no desire to become an engineer. Instead, as she searched for a career she loved, she accepted a job as an $8-an-hour customer service representative at then-unknown startup America Online “just to pay the bills.”

During AOL’s hyper-growth, Mary was promoted four times, survived six layoffs and became AOL’s first head of Corporate Training. As her career shot upward, her personal life went in the opposite direction as she dealt with a difficult, sometimes threatening, marriage that ended in divorce. During those years, she learned that in order to create the career she wanted, let alone the life she wanted, being a “good girl” wasn’t good enough.

Instead, she needed to reach deep inside and tap into her bold, audacious, and courageous – bodacious – woman. That decision set her on a path where she has never looked back.

Mary’s rapid rise through the ranks of AOL came to a startling sudden halt, when she ran smack into the glass ceiling. Though impressed with her ascent, her manager’s picture of Mary was frozen in time with no room for growth or change. Not satisfied to settle, Mary made the bodacious decision to leave AOL and build another path to success.

She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Organization Development from Pepperdine University at the same time becoming Board member and co-owner of the human resources consulting company HumanR.

When she was unexpectedly inspired to write a book about her lessons learned, she also didn’t anticipate that it would be picked up by a New York City publisher and go from concept to book shelves in 14 months. However, these events caused her to realize her new passion of inspiring women to be bodacious and to start her own company Bodacious! Ventures.

Through her writing, speaking engagements, consulting, her Bodacious Woman’s Club and more, Mary shows women how to be bodacious in life, career, and business. She is the author of two books, "Bodacious! Woman: Outrageously in Charge of Your Life and Lovin’ It" and "Bodacious! Career: Outrageous Success for Working Women" and contributor to "101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life."

Hitting both ends of the media spectrum, Mary has been featured on the cover of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine and been spoofed on the E! Entertainment TV Show “The Soup.” Appearing on numerous radio and TV programs - spoofed or not - Mary continues to show women how to be bodacious and live like their nail color!