Chief of Staff

Your role

You are the strategic operator who turns Emerge's growth ambitions into executed reality. You own the political intelligence that drives sales, the operational systems that keep the business running, and the partnership accountability that protects our reputation. You make the co-founders more effective by taking entire problem domains off their plate.

Political Intelligence & Messaging
You map the political landscape: who controls workforce budgets, which legislators champion second-chance employment, which districts are motivated by reducing recidivism vs. filling labor shortages. You package Emerge's outcomes into tailored political products that speak directly to what each stakeholder cares about. You track election cycles, leadership transitions, budget announcements, and policy shifts that create opportunities for Emerge to expand. You support state, county, and city line items work—understanding appropriation cycles, identifying when budgets are being drafted, building relationships with budget committee staffers, and helping leadership navigate the political process of getting Emerge included in new workforce development line items or expanding existing allocations.

Event Strategy & Political Engagement
You design and execute events that put elected officials in the same room as Emerge graduates. You build a repeatable playbook: who gets invited (and why), how to generate local press, how to brief politicians so they feel ownership over the program's success. You help Zo convert celebration into contracts by identifying follow-up opportunities, tracking commitments, and turning goodwill into budget allocations. Every event becomes a lead generation and renewal engine.

GTM Operations & Infrastructure
You build the outreach machine in Clay, Apollo, and AI agents that helps Emerge systematically reach the people who control workforce development budgets. You research the landscape: workforce development boards, city council members, county executives, state legislators, corrections commissioners, probation chiefs. You understand who funds what and who's politically motivated to care about reentry programs. You enrich government contact databases, score opportunities based on funding cycles and leadership transitions, automate signal detection (new grants, budget announcements, RFP pre-releases, election results that shift priorities), and spin up targeted campaigns. You draft outreach that's genuinely personalized, not "I saw your LinkedIn post" but "your county just received $2M in DOL reentry funding and here's why Emerge is the partner you need."

You build plays that run automatically where possible and create rep feeds for high value opportunities that need a human touch. You make sales more efficient by building foundational systems: CRM architecture (we currently use Close but are transitioning to Attio), pipeline tracking, automated follow-ups, living maps of our target landscape. You're proficient with CRM systems and can design data models, workflows, and automations that actually get used rather than ignored. Critically, you're your own first user. You run outreach yourself, sit in the sales seat, and feel firsthand what works and what doesn't. That tight loop between building and doing is how you iterate fast and ship systems that actually move pipeline. You own the sales operations infrastructure that allows the team to scale from $50M to $150M+ in contracts.

Partnership Management & Accountability
You coordinate relationships with correctional facilities, training providers, employer partners, and government agencies. You hold partners accountable to Emerge's standards through structured check-ins, performance tracking, and escalation paths. You are the organized operator who prevents dropped balls, manages SLAs, and ensures the entire ecosystem runs smoothly. You maintain the detailed relationship maps that let anyone on the team understand who does what, who's accountable for which outcomes, and where dependencies exist.

Financial Operations & Compliance
You manage the financial backbone: funder reporting, accounts receivable, vendor payments, invoice tracking, and budget oversight. You ensure contracts convert to cash, government payments don't get stuck in bureaucracy, and we meet all reporting obligations on time. You prepare materials for funder check-ins, track spend against budget, and flag financial risks before they become problems. Bonus: you can build financial models that help leadership make better decisions about expansion, hiring, and resource allocation.

Co-Founder Operational Backbone
You take operational weight off Gabe and Zo so they can focus on product and closing contracts. You prep materials for government meetings, support RFP responses, manage follow-ups, coordinate cross-functional deliverables, and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. You are the connective tissue between sales, programs, and operations—translating political strategy into operational execution, surfacing program insights that inform sales conversations, and ensuring the entire company operates as one coordinated unit. You identify what's broken, build the system to fix it, and move on to the next problem.

Strategic Projects & Problem-Solving
You own the undefined high-priority projects that don't fit neatly into anyone else's scope. New state expansion? You figure out the legal, operational, and partnership requirements. Major contract at risk? You coordinate the response. Board meeting in two weeks? You pull the materials together. You operate as a general problem-solver who can context-switch between political strategy, financial operations, partnership negotiations, and systems building.

You are a good fit if

You have political fluency—you understand how government budgets work, how elected officials think, and how to tailor messaging to resonate with different constituencies. You've worked in or around government (campaigns, legislative offices, policy organizations, civic tech) and know how to navigate bureaucracy without getting stuck in it.

You are operationally obsessive—you build systems that scale, track details compulsively, and hold people accountable without being a bottleneck. You've built CRM infrastructure, managed complex partnerships, or run operations for a fast-moving organization where mistakes are expensive. You can switch from reviewing a contract to building a Clay workflow to prepping a board deck without dropping threads.

You have GTM tooling expertise—you've built outreach infrastructure in Clay, Unify, or similar platforms, or you demonstrate exceptional speed to learn during the interview process (we'll evaluate this through work trials). You understand how to enrich data, build scoring models, trigger automations based on signals, and design campaigns that convert cold contacts into warm conversations.

You have deep CRM proficiency—you've actually built CRM systems, not just used them. On day one, we won't need to explain what a lead lifecycle stage is, how to design pipeline stages that reflect actual deal progression, why contact-to-company relationships matter for government sales, or how to build automation rules that keep data clean without creating bottlenecks. You've designed the architecture, not just clicked through someone else's setup.

You have exceptional AI fluency—you've built personal apps for your own productivity at work or at home using LLMs just because you love tinkering. You understand prompting, orchestration, when to use structured vs. unstructured data, and how to build AI workflows that actually save time rather than create busywork. You see a repetitive task and your first instinct is "I could automate this with Claude/GPT."

You have financial operations experience—you've managed invoicing, tracked receivables, prepared funder reports, or built budgets. You understand how cash flow works, why timely invoicing matters, and how to keep financial operations running smoothly. You don't need to be a CFO, but you need to be comfortable owning the financial back-office.

You are a strategic packager—you can take raw program data (graduation rates, employment outcomes, cost-per-placement) and turn it into compelling political narratives. You know how to make a workforce development program feel like a must-fund priority for a city council member in the Bronx vs. a state legislator in rural California.

You have event execution chops—you've planned events that mattered (press conferences, fundraisers, community celebrations, political rallies) and know how to make them feel significant while keeping logistics tight. You understand how to brief speakers, coordinate press, manage vendors, and ensure follow-through after the handshakes.

You are comfortable with extreme ambiguity—you don't need a playbook to get started. You figure out what needs to happen, build the process as you go, and iterate based on what works. You're energized by the challenge of creating structure where none exists. You can go from "we need to solve this problem" to "here's the system I built" without needing extensive guidance.

You have founder-level hustle and judgment—you work 60+ hours/week because you're building something that matters. Ideally, you've been a startup founder yourself and know what it feels like to own outcomes completely, to make decisions without perfect information, to prioritize ruthlessly when everything feels urgent, and to maintain velocity when resources are constrained. You have the judgment to make independent decisions on behalf of the co-founders, knowing when to escalate and when to just handle it. You understand the difference between execution and ownership because you've lived it. You care deeply about breaking cycles of poverty and incarceration, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to make Emerge succeed.

You are a fast context-switcher—you can go from a budget review to a political briefing to a partnership negotiation to an RFP deadline in the same day without losing effectiveness. You thrive in environments where priorities shift rapidly and you're expected to maintain high quality across multiple domains simultaneously.

You have high accountability standards—you hold yourself and others to high standards. You're comfortable having direct conversations when partners aren't delivering, when internal processes are breaking, or when something needs to change. You don't let things slide.

You are not a good fit if

You want a clearly defined role—this position will evolve constantly. You'll be building political intelligence systems one week, coordinating a graduation ceremony with the mayor's office the next, troubleshooting a correctional facility partnership the week after, and hunting down a late government payment the following week. If you need stability and predictability, this isn't it.

You lack the technical foundation—this role requires hands-on proficiency with GTM tooling (Clay, Unify, Apollo), CRM architecture (understanding lead lifecycles, pipeline design, contact-to-company relationships, automation rules), and AI/LLM fluency (prompting, orchestration, building productivity tools). If you haven't built these systems yourself, if you need extensive training on how modern sales infrastructure works, if you view AI as something other people use rather than a tool you actively build with, you won't be able to move fast enough. We need someone who can start building on day one, not someone who needs months to get up to speed on the technical stack.

You are uncomfortable with politics—you'll be interacting with elected officials, navigating partisan dynamics, tailoring messaging to different political audiences, and understanding what motivates different stakeholders. If you find this distasteful, exhausting, or uncomfortable, you'll struggle.

You prefer execution over system-building—this role requires building infrastructure, not just completing tasks. If you'd rather be given a checklist than design the process, if you're more comfortable following SOPs than creating them, you won't thrive here.

You need work-life balance—Emerge is in hyper-growth mode scaling from $50M to $100M+ in contracts. The team works 60+ hour weeks, weekends when it matters, and evenings when government deadlines demand it. If you're looking for predictable hours or clear boundaries, this isn't the place.

You avoid accountability conversations—you'll need to hold partners (including powerful government agencies and correctional facilities) accountable to Emerge's standards. You'll need to chase late payments, escalate partnership issues, and have direct conversations about underperformance. If you're conflict-avoidant or uncomfortable with direct feedback, this role will be painful.

You want to specialize—this role requires genuine generalist capabilities. You'll own political strategy, financial operations, partnership management, sales infrastructure, and strategic projects simultaneously. If you want to go deep in one domain rather than operate effectively across many, this isn't the right fit.

You need external validation or structure—there's no one above you building your roadmap or telling you what good looks like. You need to figure out what needs to happen, build it, and know when you've succeeded. If you need regular feedback, clear success metrics defined by others, or external validation to stay motivated, you'll struggle.

You think "that's not my job"—this role owns everything that's important but unowned. If you're territorial about scope, unwilling to pick up problems outside your core expertise, or need clear boundaries about what you will and won't do, this isn't the right role.

• Intro Chat (20 min)
• Take-Home Challenge
• Onsite: Take-Home Review (60 min) + Background Deep-Dive (60 min)
• Work Trial (2 days)
• Reference Checks