
About Me
Marion McGovern is a proud member of the Gig Economy. She spent her entire career in the human capital space, founding M Squared Consulting, a gig economy company, before the term was even coined. As the company grew, the independent contractor risk became an issue, so she also founded an employment compliance business, Colabrus. After growing the companies throughout California, she sold them to a South African public Company, The Kelley Group . She remained the CEO for the S. African owners for six years, expanding to new cities, managing through the black swan “tech wreck,” and restoring the firm to solid profitability two years later. She remained a Board member for an additional 6 years, and even spent an 18 month stint as an interim CEO. She wrote two books about her business experience, the most recent being Thriving in the Gig Economy, which was published in 2017.
Upon leaving her operator role, she taught business school for seven years. She joined the CEO Alliance as a Director, where she facilitates peer education with the San Francisco Bay Area CEOs. She also mentors several young entrepreneurs and CEOs and provides advisory services for several start-ups.
Additionally, she serves on several boards, both corporate and philanthropic. In both domains she has served as Chair of the Board as well as Audit Committee Chair.
She often says her career is like dim sum – there are a lot of plates on the table, and those plates are her gigs.
Announcements
My Books

A NEW BRAND OF EXPERTISE
My first book, A New Brand of Expertise – How Independent Consultants, Free Agents and Interim Managers are Transforming the World of Work was published in 2001 by Butterworth Heinemann. It is still available on Amazon.com.

THRIVING IN THE GIG ECONOMY
“Thriving in the Gig Economy” came out at the end of 2017. .
It strives to make sense of how work is done in organizations today and the many ways workers can create a career. It is a subject that is constantly in the news; every week there is a new study that may or may not agree with existing research about this new world of work. That is why this book fills such a need; I try to reconcile the research with what is actually going on in the marketplace to present for my readers a guidebook for this new world.