micayla
is an operations executive, advisor, & coach based in san francisco.
about
for 15 years i've held titles like chief of staff, director of operations, vice president. the job's stayed the same: find what's broken, build what fixes it, leave people better than i found them.
i grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, spent my formative years as an athlete and actor, and only later realized how much both shaped the way i work: patience, reading a room, building things that hold up under pressure.
if you've worked in tech long enough, you've probably interacted with companies i helped scale. zynga, through their nasdaq ipo. schoology, through an acquisition that unified the classroom experience for 20+ million students. bark, through a $1.6b spac. novo, through a valuation run from $120m to $700m. and most recently, subquadratic, as employee #8, building its operating infrastructure from the ground up.
the through-line: you can't scale what you haven't built. someone has to go first.
i've been told i can have hard conversations without making people feel bad, whether it's a teammate, a peer, or a ceo i report to. i think that's because i 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. building anything that works means asking the questions nobody else wants to, early enough that it still matters.
when i'm not doing this, i'm practicing yoga, lifting heavy things, traveling somewhere new, or asking questions until whoever i'm talking to regrets bringing it up.
contact
i work with founders and operators at inflection points, when things are growing quickly, breaking quietly, or both. if something feels off but you can't quite see it, that's usually where i come in.
i also coach operators and rising leaders through their own inflection points: a new scope, a harder team, a decision about what's next.
© micayla, llc