Khari
Austin-Rawls

Point person for a company still writing its own chapters

Khari Austin-Rawls spends his days at the center of Goldcast, a Boston software company that sells B2B video and event tools to marketers. His title is Chief of Staff to the CEO, which is another way of saying he holds the whole picture at once: the priorities the founder is chasing, the projects that cut across teams, the decisions that do not fit neatly into any single department. It is a role with no clean job description, and that ambiguity is exactly the point.

Goldcast is not a household name, but it sits in a corner of software that has grown fast. The company builds a platform for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events, plus a growing set of tools for turning that footage into clips, highlights, and searchable video libraries for demand-generation teams. It has raised roughly $40 million in venture funding, employs around 150 people, and works out of an address on Huntington Avenue in Boston. For a Chief of Staff, that scale is the sweet spot: big enough to be complicated, small enough that one person can still move the needle.

Austin-Rawls landed in that seat after a deliberate detour through business school. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2025, and the move into a startup C-suite reads as a natural next bet for someone who has spent his career switching buildings rather than climbing a single ladder.

Streaming media was the first classroom

Before Harvard, Austin-Rawls built his working life inside The Walt Disney Company during the streaming boom. He worked on ESPN+, the sports arm of Disney's streaming push, and rose to Senior Manager on the acquisition and engagement side, focused on getting subscribers in the door and keeping them watching. It was a front-row seat to one of the defining media shifts of the era: the migration of live sports and premium content from cable bundles to apps.

That period also shaped how he talks about work. During the pandemic, Austin-Rawls joined a group of colleagues known as the Black Disney Streamers, who advocated for more diversity across Disney's streaming services and volunteered their time with students. On a virtual career day for an Oakland high school - reported as the first in the nation to host a STEM career day of its kind during the pandemic - he stood alongside a Pixar animator and technology leads from Disney Parks, Hulu, and Disney+ to talk candidly about being Black in an industry where they were underrepresented.

He told the students a story from his own early years, when he found himself the only Black person in a meeting with about 60 people and hesitated to speak up. A manager reframed the moment for him, and the lesson stuck.

A liberal-arts foundation, on purpose

The throughline in Austin-Rawls's resume is range. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 with a double major in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and International Relations - not the obvious pre-tech track, and that is part of what makes it interesting. A degree built around language, culture, and how the world fits together turned out to be surprisingly durable training for a career spent connecting dots across teams and industries.

He has not forgotten where that foundation came from. In the 2022-2023 school year, Austin-Rawls returned to Penn as part of the College Alumni Mentoring Series, one of a group of alumni who came back to campus to sit with undergraduates and talk plainly about career paths and how a liberal-arts degree translates into the working world. The advice he gives students tends to echo the lesson he learned at Disney: the perspective only you can bring is the thing worth leaning into.

The Harvard chapter

Harvard Business School put a formal stamp on the pivot from operator to leader. In 2025 Austin-Rawls was featured in the school's Portrait Project, a tradition that stretches back more than two decades. Founded and photographed by Tony Deifell, the project asks MBA students a single question drawn from Mary Oliver's poem “The Summer Day”: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Students answer in a short written reflection and sit for a black-and-white portrait.

Austin-Rawls's answer was a promise about time - to stop wasting it and to treat each moment as a lesson worth absorbing. It is a small statement, but it lines up neatly with the shape of his career: a series of intentional moves rather than a straight climb, each one a bigger bet on his own curiosity.

The portrait that came out of that project - the same image that anchors this page - is a fitting emblem for where he is now. Composed, watchful, still deciding what to say. For a Chief of Staff, that is close to the whole job: take in the room, understand what no one else can see, then act.

How he got here

• 2016Graduates from the University of Pennsylvania, double majoring in East Asian Languages & Civilizations and International Relations.
• Disney yearsWorks in streaming media at The Walt Disney Company, rising to Senior Manager of ESPN+ acquisition and engagement.
• 2021Speaks to Oakland high school students during a Disney career day organized by the Black Disney Streamers group.
• 2022-2023Returns to Penn as a College Alumni Mentoring Series volunteer, advising students on media and entertainment careers.
• 2025Earns an MBA from Harvard Business School and is featured in the school's Portrait Project.
• 2025Becomes Chief of Staff to the CEO at Goldcast, a venture-backed B2B video and events startup in Boston.

A few things that stick