Leaders are not born, they are made! The saying best personifies the life of the charming, vibrant, and ‘self-made’ leader Maria Rufina. The courageous lady didn’t just stop at transforming herself! Today, she is enhancing the lives of many with her profound experience in leadership skills, behavioral skills, and more. Here is a conversation to honor Maria as a great influencer and an exceptional woman in the niche of corporate training.

What are some important features of your expertise?

In my opinion, one of the most important purposes of life is to bless others with what we have. I have been contributing to these purposes through two means: one is by empowering people through my job as a corporate trainer and the second is by being involved in community and social contributions. My calling and ambition lie around transforming lives and giving back to society.

Professionally, I am a corporate trainer and entrepreneur and my specialization is in helping people of any positional level to enhance their core competencies. I've been in this training industry as an entrepreneur for close to 2 decades now. However, my corporate training experience spans about 25 years, and I have trained more than 50,000 people from Malaysia, as well as internationally.

Take us through your prior industry experience.

As a mathematician and statistician, it was my dream to be a QA Engineer, and became one in the very initial stage of my career. I joined the electronics manufacturing industry which laid a strong training ground for my journey. I loved my job and grew on the career ladder to QA Manager in a short span. I didn’t realize my calling around enhancing corporate skills and influencing people until I was given an opportunity. It was during one of the lectures in my MBA class that I was encouraged to be a trainer by one of the prominent business consultants. I decided to give it a try and moved to a training consultant firm as a General Manager. That marked my foray into the industry. After several years, I ventured into training and consulting business on my own and founded QPAC Business Consultant in 2002. After 16 successful years, in 2018, I sold this business and founded Ace Biznez Services in the year after.

Tell us about the underlying idea behind the company.

In training, some of the key pain points for clients are that training is boring (heavy lecturing),ineffective (they do not see any behavioral improvement) or no return on investment. Ace Biznez Services’ pledge is to ensure value for money by addressing these pain points. Hence, our vision is to be the preferred solutions provider for human capital development and empowerment.

Ace Biznez too envisions building goodwill and supporting customers with cost competitiveness, service efficiency, customer service, innovation, and staff commitment. In line with that, our core values is 'D.R.I.V.E.', which stands for Dependable (carefree dependability on us for solutions), Relationship (trusted bond beyond business), Innovation (continuous improvement), Vibrant (imparting energy and positivity), and Excellence (pursuit for excellence in everything we do).

Our core services are listed in our website. Ace Biznez serves companies from various industries, globally. Our global outreach thus far includes Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia and Thailand.

“Ace biznez services aspires to reach out to more clients globally & also to forge win-win partnerships with local & international institutions”

What are some of the most unique features of your brainchild?

Ace Biznez focuses on hit-the-spot training, which means all training is customized to fix an organization’s pain points. While we guarantee results, our training is experiential and interactive facilitating a practical, interactive, effective and fun learning approach.For this purpose, Ace Biznez has invested significant amount in interactive board games, management games, props and activities from various countries, especially UK and US. One can expect at least one major management game in every training that we deliver.

To add greater value to clients, we are registered with HRD Corp Malaysia (to enable companies in Malaysia to utilize their training fund). In addition, Ace Biznez also awards Professional Certificates by IPMA (UK) - International Professional Managers’ Association or OXCEL (UK) - Oxford Centre for Leadership, as we are approved training provider for these organizations.

What are the significant milestones that you cherish?

Well, there are many moments I cherish; but if I have to mention a few, the first that comes to my mind is my journey as a singer. Starting as a choir singer, at the age of 14, I had my breakthrough with several television and radio performances. I feel proud of it even today although it took a back seat after beginning my corporate career.

On the professional front, as QA Manager, I was able to successfully drive two branches of my company towards achieving ISO 9000 and becoming finalist for the highly coveted Prime Minister's Excellence Award. Here, I also drove the company towards achieving zero defect for the first time in 10 years, while earning customer’s trust to run operations without their daily surveillance.

On the entrepreneurial front, in my own business, the company attained ISO 9000 by Bureau Veritas and became the winner of the SME Rising Star Award in 2016. I was also honored to receive the “ASEAN WOMEN ENTREPRENEUR AWARD” in Vietnam and Malaysian-Indian Business’ “WOMEN ACHIEVERS ASSEMBLY - PROFESSIONAL AWARD”, both in the year 2015.

As a trainer, I feel the happiest when clients share the improvements they see and the ROI. This too ex­plains why Ace Biznez is engaged repetitively. I also actively contribute to society, especially in women em­powerment. Some of my legendary contribution include founding a national women's organization - MiWEPs - which has 600 members in just 3 years, creating history in the 87th AGM of KLSICCI (KL and Selangor Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry) by becoming the first woman Secretary General and by strategizing and winning over 30 percent of the committee seats for women (previously 5 percent only).

Maria Rufina,  Founder,  Ace Biznez Services

Maria is a Certified Professional Facilitator from the International Association of Facilitators, USA. This apart, she is a Fellow of the International Professional Managers Association, UK (IPMA), and Oxford Center of Leadership, UK (OXCEL). She is also the President of OXCEL (UK) in Malaysia.