You are here:

Leonor Stjepic Biography

Leonor Stjepic.

Leonor Stjepic - Chief Executive, Montessori Group

Leonor Stjepic is an award-winning social entrepreneur, CEO and mentor.

She has spent a third of her professional life in the private sector and two thirds working with NGOs.  However, she has been involved in the not-for-profit sector for much longer; at the age of 18 she co-founded the Amnesty International Working Group for Children both campaigning for children who were victims of torture or imprisoned and successfully lobbying Amnesty to make it part of their mandate. 

Leonor’s first part of her career was spent in the private sector in a number of senior managerial roles and running her own consultancy.  During the war in the Balkans, she volunteered to work with children and women who were victims of the war.  Coming back to London, Leonor started working with UK NGO, Fields in Trust (then National Playing Fields Association).

Her next NGO role was for human rights charity, Index on Censorship, before becoming the first Executive Director of the Galapagos Conservation Trust.  There she worked with the BBC on the first Galapagos series with David Attenborough and transformed the organisation into the voice of Galapagos in the UK (with several front page articles in the newspapers).  Leonor also set up and oversaw the running of the Spanish Friends of Galapagos and the New Zealand Friend of Galapagos and represented the UK on the Friends of Galapagos Organisations network. 

Her next CEO role was as Chief Executive of medical research institute, RAFT. During her time at RAFT, Leonor created a life sciences company, Smart Matrix Ltd, and was its CEO for five years, whilst concurrently serving as CEO of RAFT. Under her leadership both organisations won a number of international awards.  Smart Matrix Ltd raised $8m in social investment, in what Bank of America called a case study for de-risking social investment.  At the time that she retired Smart Matrix, had been independently valued at $83m and the share price had been doubled before the second clinical trial.

Leonor has sat on numerous boards, including the Jane Goodall Institute and Chair of London Fire Brigade Enterprises.

In June 2018, Leonor took up her fourth CEO role as Chief Executive of the Montessori Group.  Recently, under her leadership, the Montessori Group has set up the International Montessori Institute in partnership with a UK university.  The Institute will host the world’s first Professor of Montessori Education.

Leonor is also a firm believer in mentoring.  She is a mentor for the Cherie Blair Foundation and mentors a number of young women at different stages of their careers. 

Leonor has personally won a number of awards:

  • Female CEO of the Year, Acquisition International 2017
  • Most Innovative CEO in the Not for Profit Sector, Business Worldwide 2017
  • UK Gamechanger of the Year, ACQ5 Global Awards 2017
  • Silver Award Business Female Executive of the Year – Government and Not for Profit, Stevies Awards 2015

In 2019, The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) gave Leonor a World of Difference Award for “making all the difference to the economic empowerment of women” and the Global Forum for Education and Learning named her one of the Top 100 Leaders in Education.

Leonor is a double alumna of Windsor Leadership.