Visionary Women Redesigning the Future of Leadership

Izabela Kramarz seated on a director’s chair in a minimal studio
Izabela Kramarz

From Zurich, by way of Ireland and her native Poland, to global boardrooms, Izabela Kramarz is helping reshape the future of executive leadership for women, one strategic move at a time.  

As the founder of TransforMentum, her mission to accelerate women’s rise into C-suite roles isn’t just visionary, it’s measurable, scalable, and system-shifting. Meet the leadership architect behind one of the most transformative coaching frameworks helping women design careers on their own terms in Europe and beyond. 

The Confidence Catalyst: How Izabela Kramarz Is Redesigning Leadership for Women, From the Inside Out 

When the system didn’t recognize her, she redesigned it. Now, she’s helping ambitious women claim the influence, executive-level visibility, and compensation they deserve, on their terms. 

A Quiet Spark on the Playground 

In kindergarten, while other children choreographed dance routines, Izabela Kramarz stood at a makeshift chalkboard, giving imaginary lessons. She didn’t know then that her future would be in boardrooms, not classrooms, but the instinct was already there: to teach, to lead, to build systems from scratch. 

Fast forward 25 years, and that same quiet determination has fuelled a career that spans continents, C-suites, and influences how women rise into leadership across industries and cultures. As the Founder and CEO of TransforMentum, Izabela empowers high-achieving women to step into executive leadership faster, and without apology. 

As she often tells her clients, success in leadership isn’t just about effort—it’s about being seen by the right people: 

“Hard work gets you noticed. Strategic visibility gets you promoted.” 

They say it takes a village, but sometimes it takes a single woman, resilient, focused, and unapologetically ambitious, to forge her own way forward. Behind every successful woman is not just grit and grind; it’s the unshakable belief in herself when no one else was clapping. 

She’s the woman who kept going through rejections, doubts, and invisible ceilings. She quieted the voice saying, “You’re not enough,” and replaced it with: “I can.” Whether she’s in the boardroom, running a business, or mentoring behind the scenes, her power comes from trust in her own leadership. 

Career by Design™ — Not by Default 

Too many careers are built by default, shaped by others’ expectations, reactive job changes, or years of overperformance without direction. 

Izabela Kramarz believes there’s a better way: design it yourself. 

Her flagship philosophy, Career by Design™, empowers women to build their careers with clarity, strategic intention, and influence. It’s a mindset shift, from “How do I keep up?” to “What am I building? Who am I becoming?” 

“If we don’t design our own careers,” Izabela says, “someone else will, and we may not like where we end up.” 

Where most leadership programs focus on performance, Career by Design™ focuses on intentionality and power, consciously claimed and strategically communicated. It is the foundation. Her CAR™ roadmap is the blueprint that delivers it. 

Career by Design™ isn’t separate from Izabela’s advocacy, it’s the structured path that turns career advancement into a repeatable strategy for equity and systemic change. 

This framework underpins everything she brings to her clients at TransforMentum. 

From Educator to Executive to Entrepreneur 

Izabela’s leadership journey began with an unplanned pivot. After earning her Master’s degree in English and briefly teaching, she was offered a banking internship. Her fluency in English opened doors, and she rose quickly, earning a promotion every two years and becoming a director before the age of 30. In that role, she led multinational programs across borders and cultures. 

Over 25+ years, she held executive roles at Credit Suisse, AIB plc, and BZWBK (now Santander Group), leading multimillion-euro portfolios and scaling enterprise-wide initiatives that impacted more than 30,000 people globally. 

She also scaled a small transformation unit into a full-fledged strategic division, introducing standardized governance models across the organization. These experiences shaped her approach to coaching women: combining intuition and empathy with business rigour and board-level credibility. 

In 2023, she was named one of the Top 15 Coaches in Zurich by Influence Digest, a recognition of both her expertise and impact. 

She later founded TransforMentum, blending her corporate background with a coaching philosophy aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 

  • SDG 5: Gender Equality – helping women rise into decision-making roles and dismantle bias in leadership pipelines 
  • SDG 3: Well-being – supporting careers that protect mental clarity and energy 
  • SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities – expanding access to leadership across diverse identities 

These goals aren’t theoretical for Izabela, they’re embedded into how she designs programs, challenges bias, and measures success. 

Navigating Career and Caregiving—with Intention 

While pursuing an Executive MBA and raising her 10-year-old son, Izabela gave birth to twin boys. She and her husband made an intentional decision: she would step down into a less demanding role, still within corporate leadership, to create space for family without abandoning ambition. 

Two years later, she was promoted into an Executive Director position abroad, proving that strategic choices and self-trust, not linear paths, define long-term success. 

Clients praise her not only for insight but for empathy: 
“Izabela is an exceptional mentor whose insights are always spot-on. I can ask her anything without hesitation.” 

The Barriers—and How She Breaks Them 

Izabela’s journey is marked by inflection points that now inform her coaching: 

  • The “Only” Experience – Her rapid rise made her a target, even among peers. That experience inspired the Resilience module in CAR™. 
  • Mentorship to Momentum – After mentoring a client through two promotions in one year, she formalized advocacy into a repeatable system. 
  • Merger Leadership Lessons – Watching colleagues with stronger internal networks accelerate faster taught Izabela the mechanics of informal power. This became the foundation for her stakeholder mapping tools. 
  • The Promotion She Didn’t Get – A high-visibility compliance win wasn’t enough when strategic relationships were missing. This experience directly shaped her Organizational Savvy module, teaching clients how to pair delivery with influence at the top. 
Turning Setbacks into Strategy 

Rather than retreat, Izabela reflected and rebuilt, creating an executive presence plan, sponsor briefing model, and upward-feedback process. Within six months, she was appointed to a global governance forum. 

“No client of mine will ever be blindsided by politics again.” 

The Career Acceleration Roadmap (CAR™) 

At the heart of TransforMentum is the Career Acceleration Roadmap (CAR™), a modular system that transforms the Career by Design™ philosophy into real outcomes. 

  • Diagnostic Deep Dive – Values, strengths, executive visibility maps, compensation benchmarks 
  • Vision Alignment – Goals linked to SDGs and personal ambition 
  • Skill Modules – Executive presence, negotiation, resilience, public speaking, organizational savvy 
  • Sponsor Cultivation – Board cards, advocacy check-ins, strategic outreach plans 
  • Accountability Checkpoints – KPIs, journaling, peer mastermind sessions 

Clients revisit CAR™ quarterly to realign as roles evolve, ensuring the design stays dynamic and relevant. 

The Numbers Behind the Shift 

Izabela doesn’t just deliver insight, she delivers results (Internal TransforMentum client data, 2023–2024): 

  • 35% average compensation uplift within 12 months 
  • 70% promotion velocity 
  • 3x increase in executive-level visibility 
  • 90% of clients secure an active sponsor 
  • 25% growth in public-speaking opportunities 
  • 80% report stronger negotiation outcomes 

Success isn’t anecdotal—it’s measurable. 

How Real Growth Is Measured 

Long-term impact is tracked through a mixed-methods ROI approach across 12–24 months. Key indicators include: 

  • Promotion velocity 
  • Compensation growth 
  • Visibility Index – measured through feedback and mapped executive networks 

Quarterly pulse surveys assess confidence, stretch-readiness, and satisfaction, ensuring transformation is tracked as both mindset and outcome. 

Brag Books and Reframed Narratives 

To dissolve imposter syndrome, Izabela coaches women to build evidence-based internal confidence: 

  • Track wins in a “Brag Book” 
  • Normalize ambition in peer cohorts 
  • Reframe imposter thoughts into leadership clarity 

Clients report showing up to key moments, performance reviews, stakeholder meetings, board briefings, not with hesitation, but with data, clarity, and executive voice. 

Overcoming the Mindsets That Hold Women Back 

Many women hesitate to negotiate compensation, believing they’ve hit their salary ceiling. One client thought so, until Izabela reframed her ask as a business case, unlocking a 30% bonus increase. 

Other barriers include softening their impact, avoiding conflict, or lacking market benchmarks. Izabela coaches clients to frame pay as an ROI conversation, grounded in metrics and business value. 

With role-play and clear messaging strategies, clients learn to lead with confidence. Those who present three solid impact metrics, such as cost savings, revenue growth, or team performance improvements, often achieve significantly higher raises. 

The Hybrid Identity Advantage 

While imposter syndrome stems from internal doubt, Izabela’s Hybrid Identity strategy equips women to navigate external expectations, like assertiveness, brevity, or formality, without compromising their values. 

“It’s something I still use every day,” she shares. “You don’t have to change who you are—, you just learn how to flex across environments and still feel like yourself.” 

 

Voice as Visibility: Her Speaking Framework 

Public speaking serves as a powerful force-multiplier in a woman’s journey toward greater influence. It establishes authority, enhances visibility, and amplifies the ripple effects of her ideas. 

Izabela coaches clients through a signature four-phase process designed to help them command presence and communicate with purpose: 

  1. Message Architecture – Begins with a compelling “Why it matters” opener and ends with a clear call to action 
  1. Data-Driven Story Arcs – Blends personal insight with measurable impact to create narratives that resonate and persuade 
  1. StageCraft – Focuses on posture, vocal variation, purposeful pausing, and audience engagement to command the room 
  1. Video-Backed Refinement – Rehearsals are recorded to fine-tune gestures, pacing, and delivery through micro-adjustments 

Clients learn to treat every speaking moment, whether a team meeting, panel, or global stage, as an opportunity to influence with confidence and clarity. 

 

Strategic Visibility in Action 

One of the most compelling transformations came from a senior lawyer at a Fortune 500 firm. Stalled below the C-suite, she partnered with Izabela via CAR™ to reframe her message, activate sponsorship, and elevate her executive presence. 

Within six months, she was promoted to the Executive Committee with a 40% raise, and later led a 15% revenue increase in her division. 

“From individual contributor to Senior Director in a listed company, with a compensation one-third higher than I thought possible, within three months of working together.” 

 

The Mid-Management Power Playbook 

Even high-achieving women can find themselves stalled just below the senior level, excelling on paper but overlooked in practice. Izabela equips them with a tactical four-part strategy to break through the invisible ceiling: 

  • Map executive allies – Identify the decision-makers who truly move the needle 
  • Quantify wins – Shift the narrative from “hardworking” to “high-impact” 
  • Lead a stretch initiative – Step visibly into executive-level problem-solving 
  • Ask for specific advocacy – Like a nomination to present at a board meeting or strategy forum 

These moves reposition women from operational contributors to strategic leaders—and shift perception from potential to performance. 

 

Beyond Coaching: Redesigning Systems 

But while individual strategy is essential, true progress requires systems to change too. Izabela doesn’t stop at personal success, she advises companies to: 

  • Publish objective promotion rubrics 
  • Mandate diverse slates for senior roles 
  • Embed formal sponsorship 
  • Normalize flexible leadership at the executive level 
  • Deploy real-time bias checks 
  • Evaluate Return-to-Office policies through a gender equity lens, recognizing how rigid mandates can unintentionally stall career progression for caregivers—most often women 

To scale this, TransforMentum is developing an AI-powered Visibility Dashboard to track sponsorship, advancement, and equity metrics across client organizations. 

“A boardroom where gender parity fuels performance, not just progress.” 
—Izabela Kramarz 

 

The Future Is Designed 

Izabela Kramarz didn’t just break the mold. She built a blueprint—and now she’s handing the pen to the next woman in line. 

Because when the system overlooks you, you don’t fight for scraps. 
You design something better. 

“Izabela Kramarz isn’t just shaping careers, she’s contributing a strategic blueprint for women redefining leadership from the inside out. In 2025 and beyond, she stands alongside Switzerland’s most visionary women building the future on their own terms.” 

 

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