Chief of Staff, CEO

Who are we?

Smarsh empowers its customers to manage risk and unleash intelligence in their digital communications. Our growing community of over 6500 organizations in regulated industries counts on Smarsh every day to help them spot compliance, legal or reputational risks in 80+ communication channels before those risks become regulatory fines or headlines. Relentless innovation has fueled our journey to consistent leadership recognition from analysts like Gartner and Forrester, and our sustained, aggressive growth has landed Smarsh in the annual Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing American companies since 2008.

Summary

The Chief of Staff to the CEO extends the CEO’s reach and judgement across the executive agenda: converting strategic intent into tracked, executed outcomes; giving the CEO and C-staff a candid business and thought partner; and giving the Board confidence that the executive team operates on a disciplined, well-governed cadence. The role carries real influence – shaping decisions before they reach the executive table – without formal management authority.

• Execution Management & Accountability: Own tracking and momentum on the strategic priorities; establish a real-time, visible dashboard with status, blockers, and named accountabilities updated weekly. Drive bi-weekly check-ins with owners to assess progress, surface dependency risks, and unblock impediments before they stall execution. Hold the C-staff to commitments and timeline; escal**?**te slippage immediately and push for corrective action. Ensure no priority gets stalled due to unclear ownership, missing information or cross-functional friction.
• Governance & Board Support: Prepare Board and Board-committee materials in partnership with the CEO and Corporate Counsel; ensure the executive team enters Board sessions with aligned messaging and resolved open items and demonstrated progress on committed initiatives. Give the Board confidence that execution is disciplined and tracked.
• Business & Thought Partnership: Serve as a candid sounding board to the CEO and C-staff, pressure-testing ideas and framing trade-offs before they reach the full executive team; represent the CEO’s intent accurately when delegating across the C-staff
• Executive Operating Cadence & Tempo: Design and continuously improve the executive rhythm – meetings, offsites, CEO communications – so the organisation runs on a predictable, well-governed tempo that prioritizes execution velocity over process comfort. Use this cadence as a tool to maintain momentum and accountability on top priorities.
• Strategy : Assist in driving the dynamic and involving strategy for the enterprise which is an AI/SaaS/Database company. Work closely with the CEO, Product Teams, and Strategy Team to design and deliver insightful and accurate presentations and major talking points for the CEO for clients, industry events, and press interviews. Stay at the forefront on innovation, thinking, and structuring the delivery of Smarsh strategic vision.
• Company Alignment: Own the “Rally Cry” or large annual goals for the company. Facilitate the development of the overall goals across the entire CEO staff team. Ensure proper ownership of each goal across the entire Executive team. Ensure proper and timely measurement of performance to the goals for the company.
• Relationship Building & Forward Planning: Build trusted relationships across the C-staff and wider leadership population, acting as a credible connective layer between the CEO’s office and the business; anticipate emerging priorities and shape the CEO’s agenda ahead of need

• Execution under ambiguity: Converts ambiguous, cross-functional priorities into a tracked plan with clear ownership, without needing formal authority to enforce it
• Business judgement: Offers a view, not just a summary – comfortable challenging C-staff thinking respectfully and pushing for clarity before decisions are made
• Strategic Communication: Demonstrates high levels of strategic ability for a leading-edge tech company. Demonstrates ability to create presentations and effective communications to articulate the strategy and its rationale.
• Communication range: Reads the room across the CEO, C-staff and Board audiences and calibrates message, tone and format accordingly
• Relationship capital: Builds credibility fast with senior stakeholders who owe the role nothing structurally – influence is earned, not positional
• Discretion: Handles Board-adjacent and highly sensitive information with consistent, sound judgement
• Relentless Follow-up : Maintains visibility and momentum on tracked items through consistent, non-negotiable check-ins; comfortable being the “squeaky wheel” to unblock progress.
• Principled directness: Holds the CEO and C-staff accountable to commitments without being diplomatic to a fault; comfortable with constructive tension in service of better outcomes.

• 5–10+ years’ experience in a Chief of Staff, strategy, business operations or management consulting capacity, including direct experience supporting a CEO or C-suite principal
• Demonstrated experience preparing Board or Board-committee materials, or operating in close proximity to a governance process
• Track record of driving multi-stakeholder initiatives from strategy through to execution in a matrixed organisation
• Bachelor’s degree required; MBA or equivalent advanced degree preferred
• Demonstrated discretion handling highly confidential, market-sensitive or Board-level information
• Experience in private equity-backed or portfolio company environments; comfortable with rigorous financial discipline, operational metrics, and investor/board reporting cadences
• Builds trust and influence across the organization (and levels) while maintaining objectivity; respected for being fair-minded, not for being liked; earns credibility through follow-through and integrity, not by avoiding hard conversations.
• Based in Atlanta, GA; hybrid (in-office four days a week)

• A working action-item and decision-tracking system is in place and adopted by the C-staff, with a defined on-time closure rate
• Board and executive-team materials are consistently ready ahead of scheduled sessions with no last-minute escalations to the CEO
• Independently trusted by at least three C-staff members as a first port of call on cross-functional sequencing, without needing the CEO to broker it
• A predictable executive operating cadence (meetings, offsites, communications) is documented and running with minimal CEO intervention
• The top priorities show measurable progress against defined milestones, with no material slippage due to execution or coordination gaps
• C-staff reports (in confidential feedback) that the CoS consistently ensures decisions get executed, not just debated; seen as raising the bar on organizational accountability

Smarsh hires lifelong learners with a passion for innovating with purpose, humility and humor. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with the most popular communications platforms and the world’s leading cloud infrastructure platforms. We use the latest in AI/ML technology to help our customers break new ground at scale. We are a global organization that values diversity, and we believe that providing opportunities for everyone to be their authentic self is key to our success. Smarsh leadership, culture, and commitment to developing our people have all garnered Comparably.com Best Places to Work Awards. Come join us and find out what the best work of your career looks like.