Chief of Staff to the CEO

The Chief of Staff to the CEO serves as a strategic partner, integrator, and execution leader for the CEO, helping translate organizational priorities into coordinated action across the organization.

Working closely with the CEO and executive leadership team, the Chief of Staff helps establish priorities, drive strategic initiatives, improve leadership effectiveness, coordinate cross-functional work, prepare executive decision-making, and ensure commitments move from discussion to execution.

This role is ideal for a highly strategic and operational leader who can move comfortably between big-picture organizational priorities and detailed execution. The Chief of Staff must be able to influence without relying solely on authority, navigate ambiguity, manage multiple stakeholders, and create structure in a rapidly evolving environment.

Key Responsibilities

CEO Strategic Partnership

• Serve as a trusted strategic advisor and thought partner to the CEO.
• Help the CEO prioritize organizational initiatives, decisions, opportunities, and competing demands.
• Translate CEO priorities into clear objectives, owners, milestones, and execution plans.
• Conduct research, analysis, and synthesis to support CEO decision-making.
• Identify emerging risks, dependencies, organizational gaps, and opportunities requiring executive attention.
• Provide candid, thoughtful perspectives on organizational issues and potential courses of action.

Organizational Planning & Performance

• Partner with the CEO and leadership team on annual, quarterly, and longer-term organizational planning.
• Help establish goals, priorities, milestones, and measures of success.
• Develop dashboards, executive reports, or other mechanisms that provide visibility into organizational progress.
• Identify execution gaps and recommend actions to improve organizational effectiveness.
• Help connect strategy, operations, people, resources, and organizational capacity.

CEO Communications & Decision Support

• Prepare executive briefings, presentations, talking points, decision documents, and strategic communications.
• Synthesize complex information into concise recommendations and actionable insights.
• Ensure the CEO has appropriate context and materials before important meetings and decisions.
• Support communications requiring coordination across leadership or the broader organization.

Special Projects

• Lead high-priority initiatives that may not naturally sit within a single organizational function.
• Step into emerging organizational challenges where additional structure or executive leadership is needed.
• Develop frameworks, processes, and operating mechanisms that strengthen organizational scalability.
• Conduct organizational assessments and recommend improvements when appropriate.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of progressive experience in strategy, operations, management consulting, program leadership, organizational effectiveness, executive leadership support, or a related field.
• Prior experience working closely with a CEO, founder, executive leadership team, or Board strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong strategic thinking combined with exceptional execution capability.
• Ability to analyze complex information and translate it into clear recommendations.
• Excellent executive communication, writing, presentation, and facilitation skills.
• Strong project and program management capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across functions and levels of an organization.
• Exceptional judgment, discretion, and ability to manage confidential information.
• Comfort working within ambiguity and rapidly changing organizational environments.
• Experience building processes or operating systems within an early-stage or scaling organization is highly desirable.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means the CEO has greater leverage and visibility across the organization, executive priorities are clearly defined, leadership teams are aligned, decisions translate into action, and critical initiatives consistently move forward.

The Chief of Staff creates the connective tissue between strategy, leadership, and execution, helping the CEO and leadership team operate with greater clarity, discipline, accountability, and organizational impact.