Professional Development: Confidence As a Tool to Enhance Your Career with MJ Klimas

Confidence as a Tool to Enhance Your Career

• Learn the importance of confidence as a component of professional presence and success
• Understand how presence and confidence impact the power women wield in business
• Take away techniques to enhance confidence and command the room
• Leverage tools to craft bold meeting strategies and accomplish personal development goals

Who is MJ?

MJ Klimas is a proven business leader with success in motivating and challenging organizations to achieve outstanding levels of innovation, sales, and profitability. Positive, articulate, and decisive, she collaborates across businesses to improve customer satisfaction, connect capabilities, and address end-to-end costs and risks. She leads through volatility and crisis by being agile, responsive to risk appetite, and uniting teams to persevere. As Board Chair, MJ consistently crafted visionary strategies and synthesized issues into tangible goals. She is a thoughtful and compassionate leader who lives by the Golden Rule and mentors others to succeed by bringing energy, passion, creativity, and value to every project.

Recently, MJ invested fifteen years accelerating the growth of Banc of America Public Capital Corp (BAPCC), a Bank of America subsidiary providing financing solutions for equipment, and energy efficiency to government, healthcare, education, and not-for-profit organizations. Beginning as a Managing Director and National Line of Business Leader, she was promoted to President and Board Chairwoman in 2019. In this role, she built an exceptional team and crafted the strategic vision to deliver more than $2B annually in new business volume. As Board Chairwoman, she fostered collaborative relationships that supported business goals across multiple functions. 

During her tenure at BAPCC, MJ made a lasting impact on the industry after advocating for, creating, and launching a cutting-edge product that generated $2B in new financing. Initially designed to support a healthcare system’s transition to electronic medical records, it gained broader appeal and is widely used today. MJ additionally served as a member of the Bank’s Pittsburgh Market Leadership Team, fostering community connection and brand development through events and volunteer initiatives. A career-long champion of women and minorities, she played a key role in founding and supporting multiple employee resource groups, serving as a strategist, advocate, sponsor, and one-on-one mentor. 

Sought for her subject matter expertise in healthcare finance, Bank of America recruited MJ in 2005 from GE Healthcare Financial Services (GEHFS) to set and execute a national growth strategy for its new healthcare vertical. Prior to GEHFS, MJ earned multiple accolades for her success at Citicorp Global Equipment Finance in developing innovative healthcare marketing and product solutions. During this foundational time, she leveraged the values of listening, trusting her teams, and candid communication, which became key pillars of her leadership style. Today MJ is Principal of the firm PresencePlus Consulting. She brings talent, experience, and myriad life lessons to offer valuable insights focusing on Professional Presence, Personal Brand and Presentation Skills. MJ helps people leverage these skills to confidently navigate career advancement. MJ is a highly regarded speaker on the power of professional presence adding to her accomplished career speaking on financing challenges facing systems of healthcare and higher education. 

A music lover who enjoys playing electric guitar with her family and her band Ruby and The Riptides, MJ is a long-standing champion of enhancing opportunities for children to experience the joy of music. She served as Director and Secretary of The Pittsburgh Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and the PineRichland Orchestra Association, helping promote and fund programming. MJ is currently a member of the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s Women’s Leadership Council bringing time, talent, and resources to those in need. MJ earned a BA in Marketing from Michigan State University.