Strategic Operator

Chief of Staff

for technically complex companies.

Customer-centered operating support shaped by thirty years across technical, commercial, and operating roles.

ExpeditionUncertainty, terrain, movement. Complex environments where the path is still being found.
FoundryBuilding, shaping, forging. Turning raw material into something useful and durable.
Available for select fractional engagements

Where the role is useful

The conditions vary by company and stage. The role is to manage the complexity the CEO deals with every day: organizing the work, keeping it visible, and making sure it moves.

Operating Cadence

Meeting structure, planning rhythm, and follow-through that help the leadership team stay aligned.

Decision Support

Board meetings, investor updates, leadership reviews, and internal decisions. The work is preparing the context, tradeoffs, materials, and follow-up so the decision process is clear.

Strategy to Execution

Priorities made visible, ownership made clear, dependencies surfaced, and decisions carried into execution without adding unnecessary process.

Cross-Functional Work

Work that spans teams or sits outside a single function: partnerships, market work, operating model changes, special projects, and sensitive initiatives that need clear handling.

Thirty years close to complex work

Across thirty years and six companies, I have worked close to founders, CEOs, technical teams, customers, and partners when strategy, execution, and market direction needed to be connected in practical ways.

Across those companies the work included standing up operating models from scratch, shaping market positioning, building early commercial pipelines, and translating between technical depth and executive decision-making at scale.

Systems thinking. Execution bias. Cross-discipline range.

The pattern has been consistent: listen first, understand the system, find the leverage, and help the company move.

The engagements that work

This works best when the CEO is looking for a senior operator who can work alongside them with autonomy, absorb context quickly, move across functions, and carry important priorities without adding complexity.

Early to growth stage companies where the pace of work has outgrown informal coordination
Organizations where the product, the domain, or the people being served require depth to understand
Mission-driven companies still building the structure to match their ambition
CEOs looking for an operator who can move across functions, carry context, and represent their thinking accurately
Teams that value direct communication, discretion, deep listening, and follow-through

Start a conversation

A small number of engagements are active at any given time. If the work described here is relevant to what you are building, email is the right place to start.