Professor Maja

Why organisations work with Maja Jovanovic

• She has built an entire body of work around one specific, observable behaviour, the unnecessary workplace apology, which gives her sessions a level of practical specificity that most “women’s confidence” programming lacks.
• Her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk and the follow-on TED Ideas article gave her a clearly identifiable thesis that travels beyond the room, useful for internal communications and post-event reinforcement.
• She works from a sociological lens rather than a self-help one, framing communication patterns as products of culture and structure, which lands well with audiences sceptical of motivational content.
• She has been engaged across regulated and conservative environments, including programming associated with TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School, and consulted on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign.
• She delivers in keynote, half-day workshop and online-course formats, viable for both flagship women’s leadership events and ongoing manager-level capability work.

Biography highlights

• PhD in Sociology, with research focus on the sociology of women’s health.
• Contract and sessional faculty, Department of Sociology, McMaster University.
• Author of Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make (Rock’s Mills Press), with a published workbook and audiobook edition.
• TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen speaker, “How apologies kill our confidence”.
• Contributor to TED Ideas on workplace apology language and confidence.
• Consultant on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign; broadcast appearances on Global News, CHCH and CTV’s The Social.

Biography

The unnecessary apology is one of the most reliable predictors of how a woman will be perceived in a meeting. Maja Jovanovic has spent over a decade studying it. As a sociologist trained at the doctoral level in the sociology of women’s health, she treats workplace communication as a social phenomenon, not a personality trait, which is what gives her work its bite.

Her book, Hey Ladies, Stop Apologizing… and Other Career Mistakes Women Make, names a category of behaviour that most leadership programmes gesture at but rarely isolate. The argument is straightforward. Women in professional settings apologise reflexively in moments that do not call for it, and each instance erodes credibility with the stakeholders who decide who gets sponsored. The book has appeared in multiple editions through Rock’s Mills Press, alongside a workbook and audiobook.

The thesis travelled further through her TEDxTrinityBellwoodsWomen talk, “How apologies kill our confidence”, and a TED Ideas feature that her own site identifies as the platform’s most-read piece of 2019. That visibility has translated into corporate workshops with audiences at TD Bank, RBC Financial Group and Harvard Business School programming, plus consulting work on Midol’s “No Apologies. Period.” campaign.

What sets her apart in the women’s leadership speaker pool is her refusal to generalise. She does not talk about confidence as an attitude. She talks about confidence as a set of identifiable speech acts, written and spoken, that can be observed, measured and changed inside a quarter, the form of intervention that operations-minded HR and DEI functions can actually use.

Key speaking topics

• Workplace communication and gendered language patterns
• Confidence as a learnable behaviour
• Apology language and professional credibility
• Imposter syndrome and structural bias
• Allyship and male sponsorship in mixed teams
• Perfectionism and people-pleasing at work
• Women’s leadership and career progression

Ideal for

• CHRO, Chief Diversity Officer and DEI leads designing women’s progression programmes
• Heads of Talent and Learning building manager and high-potential curricula
• Employee resource group and women’s network leads booking flagship events
• Financial services, professional services and regulated-industry firms running women’s leadership tracks

Audience outcomes

• A sharper, sociologically grounded vocabulary for naming the communication patterns that limit progression.
• Specific edits to spoken and written language that audiences can apply the next working day.
• A reframe of confidence as observable behaviour rather than personal trait, coachable at scale.
• A clearer view of where individual habit ends and organisational culture begins, useful for managers and sponsors.