Maria joined Diamond McCarthy as Senior Counsel in April 2008. She is a commercial litigator and has been a bankruptcy and restructuring specialist for more than 20 years. She has extensive experience in international and cross-border litigations and insolvencies.

Maria spent over fifteen years at the Bank of New York as Senior Counsel and served as Acting Head of Litigation. She managed all aspects of the bank's credit exposure to corporate borrowers, including those in the real estate and shipping businesses, provided legal and business advice to the restructuring units of the bank and participated in virtually all of the well known bankruptcies in which the bank was a creditor, including Kmart and Owens Corning. She also managed litigations and insolvency matters for the corporate trust group, including the Dow Corning bankruptcy case, and handled cases involving letters of credit, correspondent and international banking, factoring, equipment leasing and the bank's own real estate. Maria also coordinated the bank's response to a major money laundering investigation.

Before joining the bank, Maria spent six years at Shearman & Sterling, where she was a member of the litigation department and the corporate restructuring practice group. She represented the receiver for several New York office buildings alleged owned by the Marcos family of the Philippines and obtained a preliminary injunction against continued activities by existing building management. She also prepared a brief to the Supreme Court on judicial recusal, defeating a debtor's attempt to void a confirmed plan of reorganization, and led discovery relating to a product line of the acquiring company in anti-trust litigation arising from a hostile takeover. Maria began her legal career at Brown Wood, now Sidley Austin, as a member of the mortgage-backed financing and litigation teams. Maria is a member of the New York State and American Bar Associations and the American Bankruptcy Institute and admitted to practice in New York federal and state courts. She is active in the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, having served on the Comparative Law and Judiciary Committees. She received a B.A. in history, magna cum laude, from Davidson College and her law degree from Columbia, where she was a member of the Moot Court Board. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Columbia Law School Association and as chair of the Davidson College Board of Visitors.