Disaster Recovery Journal Fall 2025

CAREER SPOTLIGHT

Tell us about some of the challenges you have encountered in your career? Early on, I felt what I can only describe as impostor syndrome. I was meeting with individuals who were subject matter experts in their field and initially wondered what I had to offer based on my limited experience. I later realized my value add was my ability to have that third-party view, the ability to take a step back and see the bigger picture of what each business function was doing to contribute to the greater good of the organization and pro vide insights to them about their depen dencies to other business units, people, applications, and third-parties that they otherwise would not have Have you had any mentors? Describe the effect they have had on your career. I’ve been blessed with a plethora of mentors and sponsors throughout my career. When I started working within business continuity and disaster recov ery space full time, I had a director who (gently) threw me into the fun of a two day weekend DR exercise after one week in my role. He set me up for success by guiding me in the areas where he knew I knew nothing (the organization itself) and let me figure things out for myself. The level of both support and autonomy immediately gave the confidence I needed to propel myself into the role and com pany, as well as a quick way to establish the necessary relationships both within the IT team and the business. Outside of the resilience space, I’ve established other strong, long-lasting rela tionships with folks like MBA professors, speakers who partnered with to run work shops with my customer success team at Fusion, and clients who have turned into professional sounding-boards for me. Each relationship brings something dif ferent to the table, a new way of thinking about a challenge, guidance on how to manage a team, and input on managing an ever-changing career landscape.

Career Spotlight: Maya Calabrese By MELANIE LUCHT

vices industry in Boston in 2008 and was exposed to risk management very quickly, given the economic state of the world at that time. A few years later, I stepped into the role of business continuity coordinator for a mid-sized investment manager and took over the system administration of a legacy planning platform, which is where I started to fall in love with the nature of global resiliency planning. I was exposed to every business func tion across the organization, how each business unit’s work contributed to the broader business goals and objectives, and started to use critical thinking skills to help support each function’s resiliency strategies.

Tell us about yourself – your name, company, title, and responsibilities? Maya Calabrese, Fusion Risk

Management, manager, customer success. In my role, I am responsible for account and portfolio management strategy for the customer success team; own and lead strategic customer relationships for a portfolio of high-growth and complex accounts, ensuring long-term success; and manage a global team of customer suc cess managers. How did you get into the business resilience industry? I started working in the financial ser

42 DISASTER RECOVERY JOURNAL | FALL 2025