About us
Behind Elevative there is a small team passionate about helping organisations navigate change from the human side. We believe successful change isn’t just about strategy or systems. It’s about how leaders communicate, how teams make sense of uncertainty and how people experience the journey. Our role is to support leaders with the clarity, capability and confidence needed to guide their organisations through complex moments.
“Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge.”
– Brené Brown
Mariana
Mariana founded Elevative after more than 17 years working in change advisory, leadership development, and coaching across government, corporate and not-for-profit organisations. Her work blends behavioural science with practical frameworks, but at the heart of it all is something simpler: a deep curiosity about people, their stories, and how leaders grow when things get messy.
She’s the kind of person who might spend the morning coaching a leadership team through a complex change conversation and the weekend volunteering or mentoring emerging leaders. As Director of Diplomacy for the Australia Latam Emerging Leaders Dialogue, she supports the next generation of leaders, and she has long supported Special Olympics Venezuela, a cause close to her heart.
Mariana has lived and worked across cultures and industries. She has explored six continents so far, Antarctica is intentionally saved for the right moment. One thing she has learned along the way: whether in organisations or life, change rarely follows a neat plan. But with the right conversations, courage, and clarity, it can still lead somewhere remarkable.
“At the heart of everything I do is the H2H approach, the human connection. It's not just about strategy, it's about people, their stories, and how we can grow together."
– Mariana Marcano Franco
Patti
Patti runs partnerships and growth at Elevative, which mostly means she spends her days doing what she does best: building real relationships and making sure organisations find solutions that genuinely help their people grow.
A marketer at heart and a salesperson by trade, Patti has a rare ability to make you feel like the most important call on her calendar, because to her, you genuinely are. She believes the best partnerships start with curiosity, honesty, and the willingness to ask the right questions before jumping to solutions.
Outside of Elevative, she’s a proud mum of two girls, a loyal lactose-free coffee enthusiast, and the owner of an accent that almost always sparks a follow-up question. Her personal mantra comes from her Spanish roots: Lo mejor es lo que pasa, the best things in life are often the ones you never saw coming.
"Great partnerships start with understanding what organisations truly need and making sure the right solutions create meaningful impact."
– Patricia Josefina Santo
Team philosophy
We built Elevative on a pretty simple belief: change works best when it's human. Not the glossy, everything-is-fine kind of human. The real kind, where honest conversations happen, where leaders are allowed to not have all the answers, and where strategy and empathy actually sit in the same room. We care about clarity. We care about doing the work properly. And we believe a well-timed laugh makes hard change a little more bearable. Behind the scenes, we work the way we tell organisations to work, with curiosity, open dialogue, and a lot of coffee. You'll find us sharing half-baked ideas, debating better ones, recording videos in questionable lighting, celebrating wins loudly, and sitting with each other through the occasional messy moment. We take the work seriously. We don't take ourselves too seriously.
“Growth requires intention, consistency, and frequency. It's the steady commitment to these principles that turns potential into progress.”
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