Story

Founder’s Story

Boardroom Rising Corporation was founded by Mao C. Keo, MBA, a global business development and growth executive with more than two decades of experience operating inside complex organizations at moments of growth, transformation, and strategic inflection.

Before building Boardroom Rising, Mao held senior leadership roles at SAP, Adobe, and Oracle, where she led global ecosystem and growth strategies and worked closely with C-suite and executive leadership teams. She navigated the realities of scale, revenue growth, and high-stakes decision-making inside some of the world’s most influential global brands and companies. Her work spanned regions, industries, and complex operating environments, often at moments where clarity, alignment, and judgment mattered as much as speed.

Alongside this professional path was a personal one that began long before any boardroom. Mao arrived in the United States as a refugee, learning early what it meant to enter rooms without history, without context, and without guaranteed voice. Watching who was listened to, who was overlooked, and how decisions were made was not theoretical. It was learned early, and it stayed.

That early awareness carried forward into her professional life. Across companies and leadership roles, the same tension surfaced again and again. Leaders were asked to make consequential decisions swiftly, often without space for reflection or true alignment. Organizations rewarded momentum even when meaning was unclear. Story was treated as presentation rather than as a discipline for sense-making, alignment, and leadership.

Boardroom Rising was created in response to that gap.