chief-strategy-officer
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Monica Ashauer
Monica Ashauer is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Birdy Grey, the direct-to-consumer bridal brand that put stylish bridesmaid dresses on the map for under $100. A Wharton-trained, ex-McKinsey strategist, she paired with best friend Grace Lee Chen in 2017 to fix a broken category - the six-month wait, the non-returnable polyester, the $300 dress worn once. The result: a hybrid made-to-order model that built reverse working capital, crossed $100 million in revenue by 2024, and made Birdy Grey a wedding-season staple. In 2025 she stepped from President into the Chief Strategy Officer seat and joined the board as Executive Chairman.
Chris Papagianis
Chris Papagianis is the Chief Strategy Officer of Hudson Bay Capital Management, a multi-strategy hedge fund, a role he took in November 2023. Before that he spent nearly eight years as a partner at Paulson & Co. and president of the Paulson Family Foundation, working public markets, private investments, and the firm's government affairs. His path runs through the West Wing - he was Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy under George W. Bush - and through the policy-shop world, where he ran Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute and became one of Washington's most cited voices on housing finance and the unfinished business of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Harvard grad, Peabody Fellow, congressional witness, and a rare operator equally fluent in spreadsheets and statute.
Harpreet Mangat
Harpreet Mangat is a British-trained neurosurgeon turned Stanford MBA and McKinsey consultant who now serves as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Hippocratic AI, a $3.5 billion healthcare AI company building clinically safe generative AI agents for patient engagement. His rare career arc - from brain surgery and ICU care during COVID-19, through venture capital and management consulting, to the frontier of healthcare AI - makes him one of the most credentialed operator-clinicians in the industry.
Nathan Blecharczyk
Nathan Blecharczyk is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Airbnb, the world's largest hospitality platform. A self-taught programmer who built a million-dollar software business in high school, Blecharczyk coded Airbnb's original website and led its engineering, data science, and payments teams. Known for the infamous cereal box fundraising stunt that kept Airbnb alive in 2008, he now oversees the company's global strategy and chairs Airbnb China. With a net worth of $9.4 billion and a commitment to The Giving Pledge, he's transformed from a Boston kid tinkering with his father's old machines into one of tech's most influential builders.