Role: Chief of Staff
Location: Chicago, IL
About our client:
Our client is a $6M functional medicine testing company serving practitioners across 22 countries. They specialize in biochemical testing for mental health conditions, helping functional doctors optimize brain health through proprietary biomarker testing. They are scaling rapidly toward $75M revenue while revolutionizing how mental health is treated through precision diagnostics. Their opportunity: most longevity doctors treat metabolic, hormone, and gut health but completely miss brain optimization – their specialty. Cross-selling their mental health testing to existing practitioners alone would triple their business.
Position Overview:
This is not a typical Chief of Staff position. The selected candidate will transition to CEO within 12-18 months with 5-7% equity (worth $5-7M in their growth scenario). The Chief of Staff will work directly with their Managing Principal to execute the strategy that scales the company 10x.
Key Responsibilities:
- Drive Strategic Execution Across Leadership
- Take ownership of their Head of Sales' and Head of Operations' highest-priority initiatives
- Ensure their "rocks" (strategic priorities) actually get executed, not just planned
- Coach existing managers who need to elevate from 25-hour weeks to high-performance execution
- Execute High-Stakes Projects
- Vendor Renegotiation: Lead complex negotiations with lab partners to optimize cost structure
- Product Line Revival: Own the complete turnaround of underperforming product lines based on customer research and market analysis
- Market Expansion: Take broad objectives like "accelerate this product line" and build/execute the entire strategy independently
- Drive Business Development Revenue
- Generate new partnership revenue directly – this isn't delegated, the Chief of Staff owns the outcomes
- Build relationships with longevity medicine practitioners, functional health coaches, and preventative healthcare providers
- Convert market interest into signed partnerships and revenue growth
- Scale Their Team
- Lead hiring for key positions as they grow from 20 to 50+ employees
- Identify talent gaps and build recruitment strategies
Qualifications:
- Has 2-3 years of hands-on operational experience at a startup/scale-up where they directly owned business outcomes
- Has a maximum of 2-3 years in consulting or investment banking before moving to operations
- Genuinely enjoys getting into details and grinding out execution while maintaining strategic perspective
- Has a natural sales instinct – business development energizes them
- Is highly structured and disciplined in approaching complex, ambiguous projects
- Can take a high-level objective like "fix our underperforming product line" and independently build the entire execution plan
- Thrives in small company environments where individual performance is highly visible
- Wants to own equity and build wealth through business growth, not just collect a salary
What they offer:
-
Base salary of $150-160k
- Direct path to CEO in 12-18 months with 5-7% equity ($5-7M potential)
- Opportunity to scale a fast-growing company revolutionizing mental healthcare
- Leadership role with high visibility and measurable impact
- High-performance, rapidly evolving environment
- Equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and inclusive team