Speakers

Maria Teo is Senior General Manager of Human Resource for Upstream & Malaysia Petroleum Managemnt (MPM), PETRONAS. She partners with Upstream & MPM leaders in providing consultation, steering and driving solutioning on human capital and organizational matters. She is a member of Upstream Leadership Team and Integrated Upstream-MPM People Development Committee. Functionally, she is also a member of Group HRM Leadership Team and Group HRM People Development Committee. Prior to this, Maria was the Senior General Manager of Global Human Resource Partner for Project, Technology & Health, Safety, Security & Environment (PT&HSSE), PETRONAS.

Leading up to her appointment as Senior General Manager, she was the Head of Organisation Development & Design, Human Capital Expertise, Group HRM. During this time, she was the Sponsor for PETRONAS Organisation Development & Design business professionals’ career and capability development programme.

She also had an earlier stint in human resource management in developing people policies and structuring compensation & benefits for international operations. Maria once was seconded to East Coast Economic Region Development Council (ECERDC), a statutory body under the Malaysia’s Prime Minister’s Department, responsible to develop business strategy and implementation plan for the Oil, Gas & Petrochemical and Manufacturing clusters.

Passionate in helping those in need, she led fund-raising activities notably PETRONAS Foodbanks, PETRONITA Foodbank, PETRONAS Projek Payung 2.0 (flood relief programme) and few others on personal capacity. She was a Sponsor for Team Sabah under PETRONAS Social Enterprise Education Laboratory (SEEd.Lab), which aimed to enable cheaper, faster and seamless ways for entrepreneurs in Sabah to setup, sustain and grow their business leveraging on the power of technology and innovation.

Maria holds a Bachelor of Technology (Hons) degree in Information Technology from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia where she is a PETRONAS scholar, and a Master of Business Administration (Finance) from Universiti Islam Antarabangsa, Malaysia. She is active in contributing to her alma mater and currently a Board Trustee for Yayasan UTP and previously a member of UTP Student Development Advisory Council. She was recently appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer for the Department of Management at UTP, commencing her responsibilities in January 2026.

Maria is blessed with a son who thinks YouTuber is much cooler than his mummy’s job. Fueling her passion in organizational behavior and progressing people practices, Maria recently obtained her Chartered Membership with Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) under PETRONAS sponsorship.