Maria Robotham

Associate, The Futures Strategy Group

Maria Robotham, an associate of the Futures Strategy Group (FSG), is a psychotherapist in private practice. She has more than 20 years experience helping clients develop and execute strategies to meet the opportunities and challenges in current and future market environments. She has directed and participated in market research, business environment assessment, and strategy development projects for the nation’s largest companies in healthcare products and services, financial services, consumer durables, food and beverages, lodging and transportation, retailing, tableware and cookware, recreational goods and services, education and housing.

As a psychotherapist and experienced consumer market analyst, Ms. Robotham is called upon to assist companies and organizations understand the attitudes, values and lifestyles of adolescents, adults, and the elderly, and to translate that understanding into effective market strategies. She has nearly 15 years experience in the development and writing of future histories for scenario-based strategic planning engagements and in the facilitation of scenario immersion workshops. She is an experienced trend analyst and a professionally trained focus group moderator, with extensive experience facilitating a wide range of workshops and brainstorming sessions.

Ms. Robotham has directed or participated as a key member of a project team in a variety of client engagements. She has, for example:

• Developed a scenario-based strategy for a newly integrated health care delivery network that addressed a wide range of issues, including how health care might be organized, delivered and paid for in the future; the public policy framework surrounding the regulation of health care; and the health attitudes, values, and behaviors of consumers.
• Developed scenarios as a backdrop for a customer-focused strategy for a major U.S. airline.
• Created scenarios and developed strategies to assist a major domestic drugstore chain in understanding and meeting the challenges and opportunities of a changing retail environment, particularly Internet-based retailing.
• Developed scenarios and strategies to meet future opportunities in a consolidating marketplace for a provider of medication-assisted treatment programs for persons with chronic, complex, and long-term addictions.
• Performed a business assessment for an independent hospice organization seeking beneficial new partnerships in an environment marked by consolidations and increasing competition from non-traditional competition.
• Carried out a scenario-based study focusing on future demand for pharmaceuticals. The ultimate project deliverable was a set of strategies to effectively meet the challenges posed by alternative structures for health care organization, service delivery, and payments, and by changing social attitudes, values, and lifestyles.

Ms. Robotham holds an MA in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) and an MA in Human Development with a concentration in Gerontology, both from St. Joseph College. She has authored numerous reports and studies, including privately published reports on the future of health care, the future of the family in the U.S., changing patterns of household migration in the U.S., and changing patterns of labor force participation.