micayla is an operations executive and advisor based in san francisco.
OVER THE LAST 15 YEARS, i've held titles like chief of staff, director of operations, and vice president. but the job has always 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.
my most formative work has happened at inflection points. at zynga, where the mission was to connect the world through games, i was part of the evergreen studio during their nasdaq ipo. my first real look at what it means when a team moves fast enough to actually change something. at schoology, i helped build the company alongside the ceo, and when powerschool acquired them to unify the classroom experience for 20 million students, i was asked to stay on. that moment taught me what it means to build something worth acquiring. at bark, the subscription company that decided dogs deserved better, i helped navigate the operational complexity of going public via a $1.6b spac. at novo, a fintech built to give small business owners the banking tools the big banks ignored, i was part of the executive team through a valuation run from $120m to $700m.
most recently i was vice president of operations at subquadratic, an ai startup that raised $20m, where i joined as employee #8 and built the operational infrastructure that let everything else work.
the thing i'm most tired of explaining: you can't scale what you haven't built. someone has to go first. that's usually me.
i've been told i have hard conversations without making people feel bad about it. i think that's because i actually believe most people want to do good work. they just need the right conditions, clear expectations, and a manager who tells them the truth with some warmth behind it. i had one leader who showed me what that looked like, and i've been chasing that standard ever since.
when i'm not doing this, i'm in a hot yoga class, traveling somewhere i've never been (35 countries+), lifting heavy things, or asking questions about how something works until whoever i'm talking to regrets bringing it up.
let’s work together
i spend most of my time thinking about why companies break when they start to scale, and how to stop that from happening.
if you're a founder, exec, or chief of staff and things are starting to feel harder than they should, that's usually a sign something needs to be built.
i work with a small number of clients at a time. we can start with a 60-minute conversation where i get oriented in your world, ask the questions no one else is asking, and give you something actionable before we hang up. if it makes sense to keep going, we figure out what that looks like together.