Fractional and Interim Strategic Operations Partner

The strategy holds. The system hums. The founder breathes.

Series A/B is where informal rituals stop working, strategic bets quietly fragment, and the organization starts outgrowing the founder's head. The shift you need is from "I know what needs to happen" to "the company knows what needs to happen."

Genia Jacques
01 Who I am
Genia Jacques

I turn founder-led execution into a company-wide operating system, without lowering the bar.

I partner with one or two CEOs at a time, before they're ready for a full-time COO, to pressure-test the strategy, design the operating system, build the team and talent infrastructure, and give you back the time for what only you can do. I bring Bain strategy rigor, startup scaling reps (Kidaptive, Wrike, BetterUp), and enterprise-scale operating muscle (ServiceNow, Workday, EA). Along the way, I tell you what your team won't.

Bain roots · Startup reps · Enterprise muscle
Book a 30-minute intro call →
02 Is this you?

Five quiet signs the operating system has stopped scaling with you.

01

Your thinking on AI is years ahead of how your team works.

You're picturing company-wide agentic workflows. Your team is using AI for individual productivity. That's not a tooling gap, it's an organization gap.

02

You've become the pinch point.

Every meaningful decision routes through you.

03

You're scaling on heroics.

Things still ship, but by force of will. The system lives in different people's heads.

04

Cross-functional work has no owner.

Each function ships its piece. The handoffs between them are where velocity dies.

05

The strategy hasn't been pressure-tested in months.

Some bets have stopped making sense, the feedback loop from execution back to strategy is not working.

03 What makes me different

Strategy lens. Operator's hands. AI-fluent practice.

01

Bain roots, startup reps, enterprise muscle

Strategy rigor from Bain. Operating systems built at Series B and post-IPO scale. I know what good looks like at every stage.

02

Full-stack strategic operator

I've held every seat on the operating stack, from Strategy to Product to Customer Success and COO. I design the whole system, because the handoffs between product, sales, and customer success are where companies bleed velocity.

03

I tell you what your team won't

Your leadership team is optimizing to keep you happy. Your direct reports are optimizing to keep their jobs. I'm optimizing for you to not get blindsided.

04

AI fluency for modern operations

Hands-on AI building, not academic. Johns Hopkins Agentic AI certificate (2026), running my own practice on a Claude Code + Cowork agent stack. The fluency stays current because I keep building.

04 How we might work together

Three starting points for a conversation.

Every engagement is scoped to your context. The three below are starting shapes, not menus. I also take on interim operations leadership: holding a named operations title inside a company on a full-time basis for a finite period, typically three to six months.

START HERE

A 30-minute call to surface where your operating system is most fragile. No formal prep needed. If we both want to go deeper, a paid half-day workshop to drill into that gap with you and your leadership team. The workshop delivers a usable artifact in its own right and often becomes the natural opening to one of the engagement options below.

A

Fractional COO / Operations Leadership

2–3 days/week · 4 month minimum retainer
Best when

You need a senior operator embedded in your team to design and run the operating system through a scaling inflection point. Not ready for a full-time COO hire, or you want to de-risk before committing to one.

You get

Scope is co-designed with you. We pull from four work streams as needed:

  • Strategic clarity: strategic bets pressure-tested with critical assumption mapping, market research where useful, board-ready strategic narrative.
  • Operating system: planning and execution cadence with KPIs, decision rights and accountability infrastructure, AI-augmented workflows that move the business.
  • Team and talent infrastructure: structured hiring and onboarding process design, talent assessment and manager coaching, rituals that build urgency and agency.
  • Leadership team and CEO leverage: founder thought partnership, leadership team alignment and offsites, board materials, investor updates, fundraising support.
B

Strategic Operations Advisory

2–3 hours/week · 3 month minimum retainer
Best when

You have a capable operator in the seat and want a sparring partner with a diagnostic eye, a facilitator for key planning sessions, or a coach for specific leaders.

You get

Advisory across the same four work streams, delivered through weekly 1:1s:

  • Strategic clarity: sparring on strategic bets, board-ready narrative review.
  • Operating system: monthly operating-health diagnostic.
  • Team and talent infrastructure: coaching for specific leaders.
  • Leadership team and CEO leverage: founder thought partnership, offsite facilitation, board prep.
C

Strategy & Operations Foundation Sprint

1 month · fixed scope, fixed fee
Best when

You want a senior operator's read on where your strategy and operating system are fragile before committing to a longer engagement.

You get

A comprehensive diagnostic conducted in partnership with you across three work streams, plus a prioritized roadmap of operating-system changes and implementation recommendations.

  • Strategic clarity: independent market research, strategic bets pressure-tested through Rumelt's Kernel of Strategy framework.
  • Operating system: operating-model assessment: planning and execution cadence, goals and KPIs, decision rights and accountability.
  • Team and talent infrastructure: team structure and talent gaps assessed.
  • Stands alone or leads into Option A or Option B.
05 What good looks like

Four things that should change after we work together.

01

Clarity

A through-line from company strategy to quarterly goals to weekly execution.

02

Velocity

Predictable execution cadence. Fewer fire drills. Faster decisions. Real-time dashboards that surface problems before they become surprises.

03

Founder leverage

The system runs without needing you in every decision. You get back the time for what only you can do: sell the vision, lead, shape the culture, stay close to customers.

04

Durable capability

Stronger operating muscle in your leadership team after the engagement ends, not a 40-page binder that sits in a drawer.

06 Operating background

Twenty years, Series A through a $1B+ business.

07 What past partners say
“
Genia was invaluable in helping me drive to a compelling strategy for our early stage startup. In one month, she delivered deep strategic analysis, examining our market and proposing four clear strategic bets, all grounded in thorough independent research and her strategic toolkit. She brings a rare combination of strategy rigor and operational understanding. I'd recommend her to any founder navigating complex strategic and operational decisions.
Reza Azizian
CEO & Co-Founder, Ferveret
“
Strong operators make execution run smoother. The best ones also make the strategy itself sharper. Genia is in that second category. If you're a CEO or CPO evaluating fractional ops leadership, Genia is the person to bring in. Someone who will sharpen your strategic thinking and build the operating model to bring it to life.
Brian O'Hagan
VP Product, BetterUp
“
We brought Genia in to build operational rigor into our R&D organization. When it came time to execute major product launches, the foundation she built is what made them possible. We went from releases the field struggled to explain to launches that created real market momentum, with R&D and GTM finally moving together. Genia also tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. That's organizational courage. Easy to describe, hard to find. Whoever brings her in next will move faster because of it.
Amol Kher
SVP Engineering, BetterUp
“
What Genia built for the Platform BU was foundational to our overall success. She built the entire operating infrastructure from scratch: integrated planning, budgeting, QBRs, strategy reviews, and an analytics function with real-time KPI dashboards that gave the BU the visibility and discipline of a standalone business. The Platform BU went on to become the fourth pillar of ServiceNow's company strategy and a $1B+ business. That trajectory required an operating foundation that could scale with it. Genia built that foundation.
Marcus Torres
former VP of Product, ServiceNow
08 Next step

If something on this page mapped to where you are, the next step is a 30-minute call.

If we're not a fit, I'll point you to someone who is.

Not ready for a formal engagement? I keep room for a few founder advice calls each month. Send a note about the specific question and I'll let you know if I can help.

Book a 30-minute intro call → Send an advice-call note