Leadership

Leadership and Operating Approach

11+ Years Leading People, Operations, and Execution

I lead by creating clarity around what needs to happen, who owns it, and how decisions will be made. Today, I lead an eight person operations team and direct financial, workforce, contract, service, compliance, and multi site operations for a $50M+ portfolio spanning more than 80 personnel and seven sites.

Much of my work involves taking priorities that cross functions, funding sources, projects, and organizations and turning them into decisions people can act on. I build the structures, information, and operating routines that help teams move from a complicated problem to coordinated execution.

My Operating Method

How do we empower people today, enable growth tomorrow, and improve as we go? That question has shaped how I approach operations throughout my career. My method starts with understanding how the organization actually works before deciding what needs to change.

Understand: Learn the business, the people, the constraints, and how work actually gets done.
Diagnose: Find where decisions, information, resources, processes, or responsibilities are getting stuck.
Build: Create the structures, tools, workflows, controls, and ownership needed to solve the problem.
Direct: Set priorities, assign ownership, make decisions, work through dependencies, and execute.
Adapt: Evaluate what happens in practice, learn from the results, and adjust the approach.

How I Lead

Set Direction and Ownership

I lead an operations team of eight, including four direct reports, and work with research administrators, contractors, managers, and more than ten campus service offices. I set priorities, clarify ownership, and give people room to use their expertise and judgment. People should know what they own, what success looks like, and where to go when they need a decision or support.

Lead Across the Matrix

Much of my work depends on people I do not directly manage, both across UC Berkeley and within broader program partnerships. I bring together the right people, surface competing priorities and dependencies, work through tradeoffs, and establish clear responsibilities so work can move across organizational boundaries.

Step In When It Matters

I do not believe every decision should come through me. I create enough structure for people to act independently. When an obstacle, risk, or consequential decision requires my involvement, I step in, make the call, remove the barrier, and remain accountable for what happens next.

Leadership at Scale

80+ Personnel

Operations serving faculty, researchers, staff, contractors, administrators, and project teams with different responsibilities and priorities.

$50M+ Portfolio

Financial planning, workforce decisions, contracts, grants, compliance, procurement, facilities, and service delivery across a large research portfolio.

20+ Contracts and Grants

Resource, timing, funding, compliance, and operational decisions across a portfolio with more than 30 funding partners.

7 Sites

Operations spanning office, laboratory, field, and support environments with different operational needs.

10+ Shared Service Offices

Cross functional execution across finance, HR, procurement, contracts, facilities, research administration, and other shared services.

20+ Business Partners

The Environment I Create

Good operations should make work easier to understand and easier to execute. People should know what matters, what they own, where information lives, and when a problem needs to be escalated.

The goal is to create enough clarity and structure that capable people can use their judgment well, leaders can make informed decisions, and the organization can keep improving.

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