Makia Labs
About us
We help organizations adopt AI in ways people actually trust, understand, and keep using — long after the workshop ends.
WHY WE EXIST
AI doesn't fail in the lab. It fails in the room.
Most organizations don't have an AI problem. They have an adoption problem. They buy the tools, run the pilot, book the keynote — and six months later, nothing has actually changed how people work.
Technology alone never creates transformation. People do. AI is only valuable when it's adopted, understood, integrated, and trusted — and that takes more than a demo. It takes strategy, practice, and a way of working that respects the people expected to use it.
Makia Labs was built to close that gap. Not by selling more AI. By teaching organizations how to bring it in responsibly, practically, and on human terms.
THE STORY
From the classroom to the boardroom, and back again
Makia Labs started long before it had a name. For years, I've worked as an educator in digital transformation — in front of executives, teams, and students, translating technology that moves faster than the training built to explain it.
That work taught me something the AI hype cycle keeps getting wrong: people don't resist AI because they don't understand it in theory. They resist it because no one gives them a safe, low-stakes way to practice with it in reality. Slide decks don't build trust. Doing the work together does.
I started sharing what I was learning in the field publicly — first in workshops, then online, through @aiwithmaria on Instagram and @ai_with_maria on TikTok, breaking down AI adoption and human-centered AI for people who don't have time for hype.
One format kept proving itself session after session: a live, facilitated exercise that gets an entire team using AI together, in real time, on a real problem — not talking about AI, but doing it. That became AI on Monday Morning: a facilitation workshop, game, and playbook built to turn a Monday morning meeting into the moment adoption actually starts.
By early 2026, that way of working had outgrown what one person's calendar could hold. Makia Labs became a company so it could scale — without losing the thing that made it work in the first place: people in the room, not just a tool on a screen.
Maria Angel Ferrero
Maria Angel Ferrero is the founder and CEO of Makia Labs, and co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Rivinnov, an engineering company specialized in embedded electronics, IoT, and edge AI. Her work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, innovation, entrepreneurship, and education.
She works simultaneously as a founder, innovation strategist, AI trainer, university lecturer, researcher, workshop facilitator, and public speaker — a multidisciplinary profile she considers essential to the job. Understanding how AI actually lands inside an organization requires sitting in the strategy room, the classroom, and the factory floor, not just one of them.
Maria doesn't set out to be an AI influencer. Her focus is credibility over virality: building one of the practical, trusted voices in Europe on human-centered AI, responsible adoption, and organizational transformation — one workshop, one cohort, one company at a time.
OUR FLAGSHIP METHOD
AI on Monday Morning
AI on Monday Morning is the facilitation workshop, game, and playbook at the center of how Makia Labs teaches AI adoption. It was built on a simple observation: teams don't adopt AI because they were told to. They adopt it because they tried it, together, on something real, and it worked.
The format is deliberately practical. No theory-heavy slides, no abstract case studies. A facilitated session where a real team works through a real Monday-morning problem using AI, live — followed by a playbook they keep using long after Makia Labs leaves the room.
It reflects our educational philosophy: people learn AI through experimentation, reflection, and practice — not through long explanations of what AI could theoretically do.
HOW WE WORK
The MAKIA method
MAKIA is a double acronym. One version is the process we run in every workshop. The other is the diagnostic lens we use to design that process before we ever walk into the room. Same five letters, two jobs.
The process — what happens in the room
Mind mapping, Activate creativity, Kickoff prototyping, Iterate with intention, Adopt system: the five moves of a workshop, from the real problem to a repeatable workflow.
The lens — how we calibrate every session
Meaning, Actors, Knowledge, Impact, Alignment: the five questions we answer before walking into the room, to calibrate the session to your reality.
OUR VALUES
What we won't compromise on
- Human in the loop
AI supports judgment. It doesn't replace it. Every workflow, tool, and workshop we design keeps a person accountable for the decision.
- Responsible tech
We help organizations adopt AI with governance, not just enthusiasm — asking what could go wrong before it does, not after.
- Impact first
We measure success by whether adoption actually happened — not by how impressive the demo looked.
- Clarity over hype
We say what AI can and can't do. No exaggerated claims, no fear-based sales pitches — just what's true and what's useful.
- Learning by doing
We don't lecture people into confidence. We build the exercise, the game, the live session — and let people earn trust in the tool by using it.
CAREERS
Join us
We're building Makia Labs with people who care as much about how AI gets adopted as what it can do — strategists, facilitators, educators, and builders who'd rather do the unglamorous work of making AI stick than chase the next hype cycle.
If that sounds like you — whether you come from AI, education, innovation consulting, or organizational design — we'd like to hear from you, even if you don't see an open role that matches exactly.
SHALL WE START?
30 minutes. No slides. One of your use cases.
We look at where you stand and tell you what we'd do. Free, no strings attached.