The obvious question is usually the right one.

The Learning(s)

When something isn't working, it's rarely just the plan. And it's rarely just the team. It's usually the space, the stories and the conversations between them. Where clarity breaks down, where ownership gets fuzzy, where smart people produce the wrong results anyway.

I've spent most of my career working in those in-between spaces. Between the people building features and the customers paying for benefits – which is often the most expensive translation no one budgets for. Between American ambition and European execution. Between the strategy that makes sense on paper, the team that has to believe it enough to deliver it, and the operating system that makes the work progress.

I'm drawn to people who are translating between worlds – a technical founder learning to be a storyteller, a marketer learning to run a P&L, a CEO trying to build a company that matches who they actually are, rather than who they thought they were supposed to be.

I've been lucky enough to do that work from the inside and lived through some very defining experiences: 2 acquisitions, building and scaling small-team Series A companies and also the difficult task of downsizing them. From VC-funded startups in Switzerland, Fortune 500 companies, and all the way to the executive leadership of a US-headquartered, PE-backed company. From Marketing to People, to Operations. From hands-on work with the team – aligning elements on a slide deck – to strategic conversations with my peers and the Board.

Through it all, one constant: the better path is one made of curiosity, lack of ego and a genuine love for succeeding collectively rather than individually.

The Future

The obvious next step after a seat at the executive table would be another seat at the executive table. That's not what pulls me. What gives me energy is the creative part – solving problems, and the quiet conversation with a leader about what's really going on. I also want the future to hold space for a personal dream that is close to my heart, and this is why a different path attracts me:

• I want to sit with founders and CEOs whose teams are stuck and who can't quite name why. Where the strategy looks fine on paper, the hires are good, and yet things aren't landing.
• Or with board members and investors whose portfolio companies are talented, well-funded, and somehow still slow. Sometimes the right intervention is a fractional operator. Sometimes it's an honest sparring partner for the founder.
• And with leaders who sense that the hardest problem they're carrying is the one inside themselves, and want a sparring partner – privately – to create the space to share and work through it.

Fewer companies than I could take. More depth with each.

If any of that resonates, reach out!