Our Speaker

Maria Riegger

Maria Riegger is a corporate and banking attorney based in the Washington, DC area. She is a best-selling author, speaker, and trauma-informed parenting expert.

Maria’s rocky childhood became the impetus for her self-improvement. 

Maria’s father died unexpectedly when she was eleven. Maria was then raised by a single parent who was a narcissistic abuser. Maria learned how to be a better parent, which involved working on herself rather than controlling her child. She found that the key to a healthy parent-child relationship centers on  more laughs and positive connections and less dictating and criticizing.

In helping adults to reparent themselves, Maria discovered a great deal of crossover with themes of procrastination, people pleasing, and defensiveness, which held individuals back from achieving professional success. 

Maria currently draws on her legal and corporate background and her trauma-informed knowledge to speak on topics including optimizing productivity, encouraging self-championing, defeating procrastination, and eliminating defensive behaviors to help professionals not only improve their parenting, but also prevent burnout and achieve their long-term goals.

About TEDx, x = independently organized event

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. (Subject to certain rules and regulations.)

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago, TED has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes or less. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.

The annual TED Conference takes place each spring in Vancouver, British Columbia. TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TED Talks are posted daily; TED Translators, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from volunteers worldwide; the educational initiative TED-Ed. TED has established The Audacious Project that takes a collaborative approach to funding ideas with the potential to create change at thrilling scale; TEDx, which supports individuals or groups in hosting local, self- organized TED-style events around the world, and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at  http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at  http://www.facebook.com/TED.