I solve the problems that emerge as companies scale.
VP People · Chief of Staff · GM
Trusted partner to CEOs, Founders and Investors
What I Do
DIAGNOSIS | DESIGN | EXECUTION
The way organizations need to work has changed, and the ones that will move fastest are those designed to be dynamic in every aspect.
I work at the intersection of strategy, people, and operations, helping leadership teams redesign how their organizations operate as they grow and as the world around them changes.
My work spans organizational strategy, goal setting, performance, compensation, operating rhythms, leadership effectiveness, and AI adoption.
As AI reshapes work, I help leaders avoid embedding yesterday's management assumptions into tomorrow's organizations.
What People Say About Me
"I brought Lou onto our executive team at GetLabs right after our Series B. We were scaling a frontline healthcare workforce nationally with almost nothing in place from a people infrastructure standpoint. She came in, assessed our needs, and built it from scratch in three months across 20+ states to support 500+ frontline workers. She understands the business, not HR in isolation, and how the operating model needs to work as a whole. In a moment of real complexity and speed, she made both things easier."
David Mayer
Co-Founder at Gateway Health
"I worked closely with Lou at Headspace, where she moved across nearly every executive function. Lou sees how each part of the business affects the others, which is why founders navigating scale tend to trust her quickly. She has a rare ability to identify the real constraint within a scaling organization, clarify it, and implement changes that materially improve execution without introducing bureaucracy. She brings independent thinking and judgment, and she sees the problems you haven't named yet."
Sam Rogoway
Google Workspace | Ex-Linktree CPO | Ex-Headspace CPO | 2x Exited Founder
"Lou joined our executive team as VP People and ended up running People, Customer Support, Sales Ops, Marketing, and four acquisitions. That's not how I planned it. It happened because every time I gave her something hard, she figured it out and made it look straightforward. Lou is the person who can see what is actually happening and tell you what needs to change. I would hire Lou onto any team I was building."
Tony Lui
Co-Founder and CEO at JobGet | Forbes 30u30 | Henry Crown Fellow
Why Hire Me
My depth is in People, my breadth is in Operations.
I am an operator by background. I have been VP People, VP Operations, Chief of Staff, and General Manager inside high-growth start-ups. I have stepped into interim executive leadership across Marketing, Content Production, Engineering, Customer Support, and Sales Operations. That breadth gives me a unique perspective on how organizations actually work.
I don't come with a playbook. I am genuinely suspicious of playbooks applied to systems as context-dependent as organizations. I bring deep experience, first-principles thinking, and a bias toward understanding what is actually causing the problem.
What looks like a people problem is often a systems problem.
How direction gets set. How decisions get made. How ownership works. How performance is measured. How teams coordinate. Most companies never designed these things as a system. They accumulated over time, solving different problems at different moments, and were never redesigned as a whole.
As AI reshapes work, that matters more than ever. The companies being built today do not carry the coordination overhead most established organizations have. If the way your company operates cannot support your best people today, adding more people or more technology is unlikely to solve the problem.
Before you hire around the issue, understand the system that created it.
That's the work I do.
The Internal Operating System
Signal is your speed advantage.
Most companies have an operating system they never intentionally designed. The Internal Operating System is the deliberate version. It gives you a clear foundation for how direction gets set, a flexible architecture for how work gets done, and an intelligence layer that tells you in real time what is having an impact and what is not. Built together, it enables a scaling company to become dynamic, make faster decisions, and move at the speed of the competition.
How To Work With Me
I work at the intersection of strategy, people, and operations, designing how the company actually runs so teams stay aligned and decisions move faster.
INTERIM LEADER
Full-time leadership, right when you need it.
What it looks like:
-
Step into an Executive role (People/Ops/GM/Chief of Staff) full-time for a defined period.
-
Own a function or cross-functional problem end-to-end.
-
Drive execution while building the underlying system
Best for:
-
Leadership gaps or transitions
-
Post acquisition or org reset
-
Growth is creating drag
FRACTIONAL
Ongoing senior partnership without full-time overhead.
What it looks like:
-
Embed with your leadership team in a defined, part-time capacity.
-
Diagnose & design internal operating and performance systems
-
Coach leaders while building the system so it runs without me
Best for:
-
Scaling companies that want to avoid over-hiring too early
-
Growth is increasing complexity, but not clarity
-
System upgrade without the full-time headcount cost
ADVISORY
The right intervention, at the right moment.
What it looks like:
-
Diagnose where things are breaking
-
Design the solution
-
Partner with your team to implement the critical parts of the system
Best for:
-
A specific challenge needs outside expertise
-
An organizational problem with a defined scope
-
An existing executive needs a thinking partner through a critical moment