Strategic Operations Advisor for Tech Executives

micayla is an operations executive, advisor, & coach based in san francisco.

for the last 15 years i've held titles like chief of staff, director of operations, and vice president. but the job has largely been the same: figure out what's broken, build the thing that fixes it, and make sure the people around me are better for it.

i grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and spent my formative years as an athlete and actor. i didn't realize until much later how much both shaped the way i work. the patience for hard things, the ability to read a room, the instinct to build something that holds when it gets tested.

if you've worked in tech long enough, you've probably interacted with companies i helped scale. i was at zynga during their nasdaq ipo, worked alongside a ceo through an acquisition that unified the classroom experience for over 20 million students, helped bark navigate a $1.6b spac, was part of the executive team of a fintech through a valuation run from $120m to $700m, and most recently joined subquadratic as employee #8 and built the operating infrastructure from the ground up.

the through-line across all of it: you can't scale what you haven't built. someone has to go first.

i’ve been told i have hard conversations without making people feel bad about it — with someone on my team, a peer, or a ceo i report to. i think that's because i actually believe most people want to do good work. they just need clear expectations and someone willing to tell them the truth with some warmth behind it. a lot of building anything that actually works is just asking the questions nobody else wants to ask, early enough that it still matters.

when i'm not doing this, i'm practicing yoga, lifting, somewhere i've never been before, or asking questions until whoever i'm talking to regrets bringing it up.

© micayla, llc