Maria Volante – Sr. Vice President
Maria Volante serves as Senior Vice President of Sales for Dardis Communications. She brings with her a tremendous wealth of knowledge, sales and marketing experience, and a proven track record of managing and developing successful teams.
Maria joined Dardis Communications from Principal Financial Group in Des Moines where she was Vice President of the National Accounts Division. She began her career at Principal Financial Group in 1987 in the group health division, and over the years held several leadership positions including Senior Underwriter, Senior Account Manager, Director of Operations and Regional Marketing Director. During 1998 and 1999, Maria was a business liaison in Principal’s Strategic Planning and Development area where she provided internal consultative services to the multiple Principal business lines.
From mid-1999 to early 2007, Maria served in several roles at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Des Moines, including Vice President of Strategic Initiative Implementations, Regional Sales Manager and Senior Vice President of Business Design and Development. Her experiences ranged from managing a ten state sales territory of over 320 sales people, as the top producing sales region, to the leadership and implementation of projects exceeding $20 million.
She returned to the Principal Financial Group at the beginning of 2007 as Vice President of the National Accounts Division to serve Principal’s largest health clients. Her responsibilities included leading the third party administrator of health benefits for nearly 700,000 members, as well as oversight for the Principal Wellness Company that included over 250,000 members.
Maria blends her 20+ years of business and leadership experience with the Dardis Communications service portfolio to best serve our clients’ needs in the area of professional presentation, image, consultative selling and personal coaching.
As a certified consultant in the The Birkman Method®, Maria uses this industry-leading personality assessment and related reports in facilitating team building, executive coaching, leadership development, career management and interpersonal communication skill building.
Maria has served in many leadership roles over the years with United Way of Central Iowa, including: cabinet board member, campaign chair of the Women’s Leadership Connection and marketing cabinet member. She is also a board member of the Chrysalis Foundation–serving young women and girls in the Des Moines area.
An Iowa native, Maria is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a BBA in Marketing. Maria and her husband reside in Urbandale, Iowa.