Margaret is an entrepreneur and 17-year veteran of the biotechnology industry in the UK, Canada, US, and France. She served in marketing and business development roles at three companies which later joined AstraZeneca or SanofiAventis. She served as CEO and COO of two early stage biotech companies.

In 2000, Margaret shifted focus from the high tech side of medicine to prevention and well-being and founded Wellcoaches Corporation (strategic partner of the American College of Sports Medicine) which is building the new professions of health coach, fitness coach, and wellness coach and is widely considered to be the standard-bearer for professional coaches in healthcare.

The company’s coach training school, which employs thirty world-class faculty members, has trained 3,000 physical and mental health professionals as health, fitness, and wellness coaches in the past six years, and now trains more than 1,000 coaches per year. Margaret is a co-director of the McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School Institute of Coaching and its annual coaching conference. Margaret’s collaboration with Edward Phillips, MD, to build a coaching roadmap for physician visits, led to the launch of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Harvard Medical School, of which Margaret is a founding advisor.

Margaret is the lead or co-author of: 

• Coaching Psychology Manual published by Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins
•  Harvard Medical School online CME program: Prescribing Lifestyle Medicine for Weight Management
• White paper: The obesity epidemic – a confidence crisis calling for professional coaches
• Principles of Behavioral Psychology in Wellness Coaching
• Relational Flow: Theoretical Model for the Intuitive Dance (new theory of coaching psychology)
• Coach Meg’s Blog
• Trade book underway titled: Coach Meg & the Realization of Rachel (an overweight pediatrician)

Margaret is a seasoned speaker, including radio and TV, and has delivered more than 30 workshops and presentations on coaching psychology and positive psychology at national and international conferences including:

• American College of Sports Medicine Summit (2005/6/9)
• IDEA (2004/5/6/7/8)
• IHRSA (2005/6/8/9)
• International Coach Federation International Conference (2004/5)
• National Wellness Conference (2005, 2009)
• Consumer Health World (2006/7/8)
• Institute of Health & Productivity Management (2007)
• American Journal of Health Promotion (2007/8/9)
• Case Management Society of America (2007/8/9)

Education:

• B.S. Biology, University of Western Ontario, 1978
• M.B.A., Ivey School of Business; Canada's equivalent to Harvard Business School; last term was at London Business School under an international scholarship, 1983

Margaret, born in Toronto, is a board member of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in Boston led by Benjamin Zander.