What we offer
Are you a chief of staff looking for executive coaching or mentoring?
1:1 Coaching Call with Kara
Are you stuck or need to bounce something off someone who’s been in your shoes? I’m available for single coaching sessions when you need just-in-time advice, feedback, or support. I am particularly experienced in:
Chief of staff coaching and mentoring.
Coaching you through organizational issues and helping you refine your thinking.
Executive and internal communications.
Strategy for achieving business operations excellence.
Bring what’s on your mind, and I’ll share guidance based on my experience. Reach out to book a time.
Chief of Staff Executive Coaching Package
More long-term 1:1 coaching is designed to help guide you to performance excellence as chief of staff, setting you AND the business up for success. These sessions give you the opportunity to have a thought partner to help with a strategic or thorny situation, offer insightful feedback, or bring a fresh perspective – from someone who understands first-hand what it’s like to lead in this role. I’m here to help you thrive in this crucial role.
What you’ll get:
Private coaching calls (2 each month) held over Zoom. The first session is 90 minutes so we can go deep and align on what success looks like. Follow-up sessions are 55 minutes each.
A thorough intake form and coaching roadmap.
What to do in your first 30, 60, 90 days as chief of staff.
Customized video playlist, article library, and book list specific to where you are in your chief of staff journey.
On-call voice support messages delivered to your phone to check in and continue coaching after the live sessions for a hype session, to talk through something that’s been on your mind, or to address something new and pressing that’s popped up.
This package is offered as a 3-month or 6-month package. Schedule a conversation to see if we’re a fit for each other.
Do you aspire to be a chief of staff?
1:1 Chief of Staff Career Path Call with Kara
In reality, there’s some people already doing some, or many, aspects of the role (without the title), and others who want to be a chief of staff at some point in their career. In this session, we’ll talk through where you are, where you want to be, and co-create what your career path into chief of staff could look like.
What you’ll get:
A private coaching call. The session is 90 minutes, held over Zoom.
Discussion about the chief of staff role, where I answer your questions and we brainstorm on how to get you where you want to be. You’ll walk away with 2-3 concrete actions you can take in your career.
My 4-page primer on chief of staff, based on over a decade of serving in the role and interacting with chiefs of staff at the White House and in C-Suites. This paper includes the 3 major types of chief of staff, the skills needed, and how to grow your influence as you build toward your first chief of staff position.
Chief of Staff Career Development Workshop
In this webinar, learn about what the chief of staff role entails, expectations for the role, and how to get there. I’ll walk you step-by-step through how to do the job, and how to plan your career. There will be Q&A to answer your most pressing questions. Duration: 1 hour.
What you’ll get:
A 60 minutes virtual workshop, held over Zoom.
What the job is – and isn’t.
Learn the skills needed to succeed as a chief of staff.
How to position yourself for the role.
Inspiration in the form of real-world case studies of people who moved up from executive assistant or program manager to chief of staff
Let’s connect.
Are you an executive working with a chief of staff? Or looking to hire one?
How to Partner Effectively with Your Chief of Staff
If you’ve never had a chief of staff, or are new to working with one, I can advise you how to partner effectively together. While there’s no one boilerplate for how the role operates, there are a few core responsibilities: helping you scale so you can get stuff off your plate that slows you down, ensuring your operations are running smoothly, driving strategic initiatives, and acting as an advisor and sounding board.
What you’ll get:
2 sessions. Each session is 45 minutes, held over Zoom.
Discussion about how to work effectively with your chief of staff to free up your time in a way that enables you to scale yourself. We’ll cover where you need help, what’s slowing you down, and what success looks like.
My Leader/Chief of Staff Success Framework, built to maximize the success of how these two key roles work together. The relationship between an executive and their CoS is built on trust and mutual understanding. There’s a number of tried and true methods you can put in place to create efficiencies in Leader/CoS communications and operations, and I’ll share that framework with you.
Given there can sometimes be confusion in the private sector between a chief of staff and an executive assistant, we can also talk through how to proactively make roles and responsibilities clear to both of them, and your organization, to ensure communications and operations run smoothly and lessen escalations to you.
How to Craft a Chief of Staff Job Description that Works for You
Are you an executive who could use a strategic thought partner and right hand but don’t know where to start? Are you pitching the role to an executive? A good chief of staff scales the leader by taking things off their plate while accelerating business performance and delivery. A great one does it in a way that raises the game for the org, as well. But every single one is different, so a cookie cutter job description won’t cut it. Let me help you craft the job description, based on my deep expertise in the role.
If you’re interested in creating a chief of staff role, it’s critical to understand the 3 main flavors of the role, what you should expect them to do, and what shouldn’t be on their plate.
What you’ll get:
2 sessions. Each session is 45 minutes, held over Zoom.
An understanding of what skills and experience to consider when making your hire. In the first call we’ll go deep on you and what you hope to get from working with a chief of staff, and what success looks like. Based on that, in the second call we’ll review and refine a draft of your needs based on our first session.
My chief of staff plug and play chief of staff job description. It’s based on years of experience in the role as well as reviewing hundreds of the latest CoS job postings. The job description includes a main section that applies across all types of CoS roles, then contains sections you can plug into the description based on your particular needs as a leader. For example, if you need someone who’s strong in communications, you can add the content from that section to your description.
Let’s connect.
The secret menu
Just like In-N-Out has an off-the-record menu, here’s some offerings beyond the chief of staff coaching. Often when I have these conversations with leaders, they identify an area in their leadership growth journey, or in the business, that would benefit from a deep dive or a closer look. These additional services were created in response to those needs, and are available to tack on to any package.
-
You’ve checked out all the best selling leadership books. You’re savvy in traditional management techniques and hungry for specialized advice you can’t find anywhere else. The truth is you’re so busy being a fancy pants bosshuman that you likely haven’t had the time to take a step back and ground yourself in your leadership style.
In this engagement we’ll go deep on who you are (and aren’t), what you believe in, what you stand for, and how you aspire to be as a leader. Becoming aware of these will help you make decisions about how to show up more effectively and powerfully at work, and get results for the business. As part of this process, I’ll interview your peers (who you’ll identify).
What you’ll get:
2 sessions. Each session is 2 hours, held over Zoom.
1 day I spend conducting interviews with your peers.
A 3-5 page personalized, data-informed leadership analysis that covers your unique strengths, areas where you might consider investing in your growth, and a roadmap to your future, aspirational state.
You have the option of adding additional coaching sessions post-package to check-in on progress if you’d like an added layer of accountability.
-
Want to change careers or move into a different role? Or feel like you’re at an impasse? Let’s figure out what’s next for you. In this 1:1 session we go beyond job titles to discover what you’re good at, what you’re passionate about, and what you’re the go-to person for – and whether you want to do any of that going forward.
What you’ll get:
A private coaching session. The session is 4 hours, held over Zoom, and is broken up over 2 days.
A unique-to-you roadmap that lays out in-depth reflections on your current state, concrete aspirations of your ideal future state, and a gap analysis of what it’ll take to get there.
Your action plan for next steps.
-
I’m known as an engaging, high-energy speaker whose talks span leadership, design, product management, and career development. I’ve spoken in the US and internationally at TEDx shows, Leading the Product, SXSW, and a variety of UX and Product leadership conferences about:
Leadership
Human-centered design
Product management
Business operations
Culture building
Each talk can be customized to fit your audience, and many can be expanded into actionable workshops. In lieu of a talk, fireside chats are a great way to engage audiences with actionable content, and I love doing those, too.
If you’ve got an upcoming event, conference, corporate offsite, employee resource group event, annual meeting, industry conference, or speaker series at your company, college, or team meeting, let’s chat.
SIGNATURE TALKS
The Leader's Guide To The Care And Feeding Of Humans
Teams, and the humans that comprise them, are fascinatingly complex and complicated. To deliver the best results, and cultivate org cultures that retain great talent, we need to dive in deeper and learn about their health, their needs, and how to help them optimize for individual successes. In this presentation, I’ll share my approach to the care and feeding of humans, sharing lessons gleaned from working at the highest echelons of sports, entertainment, government, and technology.
The Cancer Moonshot Story: Lessons In Human Centered Design
In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared a new White House initiative called the Cancer Moonshot. Embracing a human-centered focus, the story of the Cancer Moonshot shows how even the most ambitious projects can proceed in a way that engages stakeholders and users throughout the design process. In this behind the scenes talk, you'll hear lessons learned on applying human centered design at scale, and how to use technology to help achieve the seemingly impossible: making a decade’s worth of advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, in five years. Here’s the story of what it looks like to design at the intersection of a benevolent bureaucracy, a devastating disease, and the humans in between.
The Art Of Reinvention
The world's a big place, with lots of exciting things to do and try. Yet as a society we pressure folks to pigeonhole themselves into silos: pick a major, choose an industry, get a 30-year mortgage. Once we get a job, there is often no clear path from individual contributor to leader. But what if you want to move around, especially at work? In this talk, learn three key lessons gleaned from over a decade moving seamlessly between the highest levels of tech, entertainment, government, and sports – from individual contributor to leader and back. I’ll share my experiences at the White House, Oscars, Super Bowl, and Silicon Valley, and how you can apply those strategies to your own career, in any industry.
Other talks & workshops:
Trust & Transformation: Your Guide to Modern Mentorship
Build your culture playbook: Shaping organizational culture to drive change
Extending your leadership: Unleashing your team’s potential