chief-of-staff
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Nicolina Jennings and the talent hiding in plain sight
From ESPN campaigns at R/GA to creative opportunity at Working Not Working, Nicolina Jennings has worked on both sides of the talent equation. Now at dentsu, her career raises a practical question: how much can a job title really tell you about a person?
Andrew Petersen Learned to Listen in a Town of 2,000
He entered medicine for the science. A rural Texas practice taught him that attention was the harder discipline - and the lesson eventually carried a two-clinic Utah practice into a national network.
Samra Anees Learned to Read Technology. Now She Helps Shape How Carta Tells Its Story.
A cognitive science graduate became a technology analyst, found her footing in marketing at Cisco, then chose the useful discomfort of a new market at Carta. Her career is a study in curiosity made operational.
Kendra Seaman Makes Ambiguity Behave
Across PTC, Toast and Calix, Kendra Seaman has built a career in the consequential space between a strategy and the people expected to carry it out.
Laura Norman Makes the Complicated Move
At Datadog, she helps a large marketing organization find its rhythm. In San Francisco, she spent years helping a small park find its future. Laura Norman's career is a study in turning many voices into forward motion.
Mike Higashioka Built a Career at the Seam Between Science and Strategy
Before he helped steer marketing strategy at Nutanix, Mike Higashioka was engineering tissue with an inner zone, an outer zone and a stubborn interface. His career since has been a study in making unlike parts work together.
Emily Cosnotti Makes Taste Operational
From photo prints and subscription boxes to an owl loose in Roblox, Emily Cosnotti has built a career out of giving ambitious ideas a workable shape. Her other laboratory is a 1929 Pittsburgh house, where taste must survive budgets, tools and the occasional uncooperative ceiling.
Emmy Weber Makes the Complicated Useful
After more than two decades turning technical complexity into clear choices, the former marketing chief now works across the seams of a healthcare software company - while making room for women navigating careers of their own.
Megan Simoes Spent 13 Years Learning Every Room - Now She Runs the Hallway Between Them
A graphic designer became a developer, an integrator, a president and, in July 2026, Chief of Staff to Nextiva's CMO. The through-line is not title collecting. It is the patient craft of making specialists work as one team.
From Snowshoes to Strategy: Ryan Swearingen’s Career in the Work Between Teams
Before he was coordinating marketing strategy at Twilio, Ryan Swearingen was leading an outdoor-recreation club through a Yosemite winter. His career since has followed the same practical pattern: organize the expedition, equip the team, and make the complicated route navigable.
Alysha Daytner Took the Scenic Route to the CMO’s Office
She left senior nonprofit titles behind, learned a new industry from the ground up and turned an unconventional résumé into an operating advantage at Sprout Social. Her favorite metaphor for the work comes from ultrarunning: the training matters because, eventually, you have to race.
Heather Martin Makes the Invisible Infrastructure Impossible to Ignore
After two decades turning complicated systems into clear stories, the Maine-based executive has arrived at the grid's least glamorous - and most consequential - layer: the network underneath it all.
Rob Meo Learned to Lead at 16. Now He Leads From the Second Chair.
He started managing people before he could legally vote. After a decade inside Splunk, Rob Meo is learning a subtler craft: making consequential work happen when the spotlight belongs to someone else.
Keri Cohen Knows the Most Valuable Data Still Sounds Like a Human Voice
The former Food & Wine producer moved from test-kitchen video to automotive communication intelligence. Her through line is not cars or cuisine - it is making complicated work legible, useful and human.
Hans Ringger Kept Following the Question Behind the Job
Before Filevine, there was a Slovak vocabulary, a pile of untidy data and a downtown Los Angeles math classroom. Hans Ringger's route into legal technology is really a story about learning to ask better questions.
Kristin Vigland Makes the Work Behind the Work Visible
At Qlik, Kristin Vigland works in the narrow space between a bold marketing idea and the many decisions required to make it real. Her career is a study in the quiet leverage of preparation, alignment and follow-through.
John Rueca Makes Strategy Survive Contact With the Calendar
At Menlo Security, John Rueca works in the narrow, consequential space between an executive decision and the hundreds of details required to make it real.
Meghan Easley-Park Makes the Messy Middle Work
Before edge AI and e-ink glasses, there were pencils taped into a prototype. Meghan Easley-Park has built a career around the same practical instinct: take an ambitious idea, ask what it is for, then make it work in the real world.
Amanda Christoff Built a Recruiting Firm on the One Thing Hiring Platforms Keep Flattening: Fit
For ten years, the San Francisco recruiter has built Bloom Talent around a stubbornly human idea: the best hire is not a keyword match, but a working relationship that can survive Monday morning.
Harshal Nimawat Is Learning to Steer Where Retail Meets AI
From Mastercard and Wharton to CommerceIQ, Harshal Nimawat has built a career around the places where technology, capital and operating judgment collide. His route into the CEO's office includes one unusually literal lesson in keeping a crew on course.
Andrew Liebendorfer and the Quiet Machinery Behind Grow Therapy’s Scale
He trained to think in processes, learned to listen inside enterprise software, then moved behind the scenes of a fast-scaling care platform. Andrew Liebendorfer’s career is a study in making complicated systems feel workable.
Anubhav Kaushal Has Spent 20 Years Learning Where Finance Gets Stuck
From writing software at D. E. Shaw to helping 9fin scale an AI-native credit platform, AK Kaushal has built a career around one stubborn question: how do you make complicated financial systems actually move?
Anne Jensen Has Spent a Decade Turning Cell Motion Into Executive Momentum
She began by engineering ways to read rare cells in blood. At Cytovale, Anne Jensen has carried that same eye for signals from the research bench into the decisions that shape a growing diagnostics company.
Ashley Schagrin Wants Accounting to Stop Working Around the Work
After KPMG, Dropbox, and nine years inside Pilot, the CPA-turned-operator has a clear thesis for AI accounting: automate the workaround, keep the judgment, and give people back the client conversation.
Stephanie Majors
Stephanie Majors is a startup operator and self-described multi-time Chief of Staff who turns organizational chaos into working systems. She has served as Executive Business Partner to the CEO at Coactive AI, an AI-driven visual content platform in San Jose, and as Chief of Staff at companies including TIDAL and The Sales Collective. With more than two decades in operations across entertainment, finance, and technology, she is known on LinkedIn for a candid, no-filter take on what the Chief of Staff role actually demands and for championing quiet, results-focused leadership over the loud kind.
Patricia Pino
Patricia Pino is a long-tenured brand marketing leader at Converse, the Nike-owned footwear icon behind the Chuck Taylor All Star. Based in Boston, she has spent more than 15 years inside the brand, rising through roles in brand planning, operations, and global brand marketing to become Head of Brand Planning, Global and Chief of Staff to the CMO. A University of New Hampshire marketing graduate, she is known as a consumer-led, process-driven strategist who connects the culture of sneakers with the discipline of running a global brand.
Debi Dowling
Debi Dowling is Senior Vice President of Business Operations, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Onapsis, the Boston-based leader in SAP and ERP application security. Wearing three hats at once, she sets the company's marketing strategy, keeps cross-functional priorities aligned as a strategic partner to the CEO, and runs the operational machinery that ties day-to-day work to company goals. Before Onapsis she spent years at Juniper Networks as Chief of Staff and business-enablement leader across Global Services and Sales Engineering, with earlier management roles at Vodafone, Siemens, and Acision in the UK. She is based in Greater Boston.
Emily Mikailli
Emily Mikailli is the CHRO and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Signifyd, the commerce protection platform based in San Jose, California. A former lawyer who traded the bar for the tech industry, she has led People and Culture at Signifyd since 2016, scaling the company's global workforce nearly 5X in headcount and over 25X in annual recurring revenue across offices in San Jose, London, Belfast and New York. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, she is known for a candid, human-centric approach to building teams and serves as Vice Chair of the board at Parisi House on the Hill, a nonprofit supporting mothers and children affected by addiction.
Fez Zafar
Fez Zafar is Chief of Staff at Mercor, the AI talent marketplace that vets, matches, and pays experts powering frontier AI labs. A 2024 Harvard graduate who was elected First Marshal of his class, he helped scale Mercor through one of the fastest revenue ramps on record and now leads hiring and cross-functional operations across its San Francisco and New York teams. Before Mercor he was an analyst at Village Global, a research assistant to economist Larry Summers, and a campus builder known for comedy, community events, and a student interview podcast.
Khari Austin-Rawls
Khari Austin-Rawls is Chief of Staff to the CEO at Goldcast, a Boston-based B2B video and events software company backed by roughly $40M in venture funding. He built his early career in streaming media at Disney, where he rose to Senior Manager on ESPN+ acquisition and engagement, then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 2025 before moving into a startup leadership seat. A University of Pennsylvania graduate who studied East Asian Languages and International Relations, he is known for candid reflections on being the only Black person in the room and for a personal creed about not squandering time.