Marianne Abib-Pech
Senior leaders are being asked to deliver in environments their playbooks were not written for: frontier markets, resource constraints, contested supply chains, and teams built across cultures. The credibility gap shows up in the room. Confidence built on past performance does not transfer cleanly to new geographies, new capital structures, or new generations of talent.
Marianne Abib-Pech is a former Global CFO of Shell Aviation, FT-published author on leadership, and co-founder of an industrial venture fund, who helps senior leaders build credibility in unfamiliar markets and complex transitions.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Marianne Abib-Pech
- A verified large-cap finance record at the top: Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, reached before age 35
- Active operating practice through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund rebuilding local, modular and resource-efficient supply chains, which keeps her material current rather than retrospective
- Author of The Financial Times Guide to Leadership, a published thesis on what trust-based leadership actually looks like in execution
- Frontier-market depth across Africa, the Middle East, and the Caspian region, useful for boards weighing growth in places where their existing playbook does not transfer
Biography highlights
- Global CFO, Shell Aviation, before age 35
- Earlier career at Arthur Andersen (Luxembourg) and GE Capital, including integration of a private bank
- Author, The Financial Times Guide to Leadership (FT Publishing / Pearson)
- Co-founder, Transitions First, industrial venture fund focused on local and modular supply chains
- Founder, LTF Partners, M&A and strategy advisory in emerging and frontier markets
- Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award, 2014
Biography
Most leadership material is written from the inside of mature markets. Marianne Abib-Pech wrote hers from the other side. The Financial Times Guide to Leadership argues that trust, not charisma, is the operating system of senior leadership, and the cases that shape it come from places where that argument is hardest to apply.
Her credibility on that point is operational. She was Global CFO of Shell Aviation, a circa $20bn turnover business, before she was 35, after earlier roles at Arthur Andersen in Luxembourg and at GE Capital, where she ran the integration of a private bank into the wider business. The seat at the top of a global division is what gives her material weight with senior audiences.
Today the work is split between writing, advising, and investing. Through LTF Partners she works on M&A and strategy in frontier markets across Africa, the Middle East and the Caspian. Through Transitions First, an industrial venture fund she co-founded in 2022, she backs companies rebuilding modular, resource-efficient supply chains, the kind of capital decisions boards are now being asked to underwrite themselves.
What that produces in a room is unusually concrete. She talks about leading across 88 nationalities because she has done it. She talks about capital allocation in difficult geographies because she is currently allocating it. She received the Women’s Business Initiative International Ambition Award in 2014, but the more useful credential is that her examples are still being built.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership in male-dominated and frontier environments
- Trust as the operating system of senior leadership
- Strategy and capital allocation in emerging and frontier markets
- Industrial venture capital and supply-chain rebuilds
- Women in finance and senior leadership
- Cross-cultural leadership and global team performance
Ideal for
- CEOs, CFOs and divisional leaders entering or scaling in frontier markets
- Boards weighing capital allocation into industrial transitions and supply-chain reconfiguration
- Senior women’s leadership programmes and executive development cohorts
- Finance leadership audiences moving from analyst to operator roles
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of trust-based leadership grounded in real CFO-level decisions
- A clearer view of what changes when a leadership playbook crosses into frontier or industrial-transition contexts
- Specific reference points for capital allocation and deal execution in unfamiliar geographies
- Reframed expectations of what credibility looks like for women leading in male-dominated sectors
Talks
A working method for leaders and organisations to hold multiple identities and adapt as context shifts.
Key takeaways:
- Why “multidimensional” leadership outperforms single-thesis leadership in volatile markets
- How trust functions as an operating system across cultural and generational lines
- Practical signals leaders can use to test whether their team is adapting or just complying
Lessons from operating and investing in markets with high entry barriers, drawn from work across the Middle East, Africa and the Caspian.
Key takeaways:
- What due diligence and capital allocation look like when the standard playbook does not apply
- Where local, modular supply chains create durable advantage
- How to read political, currency and partner risk before a deal closes
A direct account of building a senior career in male-dominated sectors and what that requires of organisations that want to retain that talent.
Key takeaways:
- What credibility looks like when you are the only one in the room
- How sponsorship differs from mentorship at senior levels
- What organisations get wrong when they treat inclusion as a programme rather than a leadership capability