Hillary Quansah
Candidate, Chief of Staff to Josh Kopelman View Resume

Chief of Staff OS

I realized pretty quickly that I could either tell you I enjoy building systems, solving ambiguous problems, and using AI to improve how people work, or I could just build something.

So instead of writing another cover letter, I spent my Saturday building this.

It's not meant to be a polished product or a finished solution. It's simply a snapshot of how I think: when I come across an interesting problem, my instinct is to build, iterate, and see where it goes.

Hopefully it gives you a better sense of how I'd approach this role than another PDF would.

01 Daily Brief Illustrative sample

Running a firm this size means constant inbound. Too much to track without one view of what actually matters each morning.

4
meetings today
3
emails needing a response
1
company in active diligence
2
decisions awaiting approval
Suggested Agenda
  • Reply to Corner Health's payer-intro follow-up before the 11:00 AM check-in (Email Intelligence)
  • Review Northline's updated numbers ahead of the 9:00 AM diligence call (Meeting Prep)
  • Approve the Northline follow-on terms and pick a founder-dinner date, both waiting on a call (Admin & Operations)
Risk Flags
  • Northline follow-on approval is due today; the founder-dinner venue holds expire in a few days
  • A cold inbound pitch and a portfolio update are queued behind higher-priority replies
02 Email Intelligence Live, try it

Hundreds of emails a week, most of them low-stakes. This sorts what's actually urgent from what can wait.

Needs a Response, 0
Recently Handled
03 Meeting Prep Live, try it

Back-to-back meetings all day leave no time to research who's on the other end. Every event carries its own brief, ready in advance. Click one to expand it.

04 Company Database Live, try it

Dozens of companies in motion at once, each with its own contacts and history. Too much to hold in memory or a stale spreadsheet. One record per company instead. Four are real First Round investments researched from public reporting (Corner Health, Assured Health, Gritt Robotics, Proception), with real founders and no fabricated history. The fifth, Northline, is a clearly fictional placeholder used to show a populated communication history without inventing anything about a real person.

05 Admin & Operations Live, try it

Too many small asks to handle personally, and not every one needs a real decision. This filters what actually has to surface from what can just get done.

Needs a Decision 0
Kept deliberately short. If this list grows past four or five, something upstream isn't being filtered.
Handled, FYI Only 0
Resolved or delegated. No review needed, logged, not sitting in an inbox.
One More Memo
Hillary Quansah
Candidate, Chief of Staff to Josh Kopelman · Recommendation: Proceed to Conversation

Background

I was born and raised in Ghana before moving to the United States with my family at the age of twelve. Seeing technology that many people took for granted for the first time sparked an early fascination with building things, and I initially thought engineering would be the best way to contribute to Ghana's development.

As I got older, that idea evolved. I realized I would never be able to build every solution myself, but I could potentially help many more people build theirs. That realization led me to discover venture capital as a teenager, and it has shaped nearly every decision I've made since. I pursued engineering, sought out startup ecosystems through organizations like Draper University and Founder Institute, founded my own company, and consistently steered my career toward innovation, strategy, and venture-related work.

I've tried building companies, and I've experienced firsthand how difficult it is to turn a good idea into a lasting business. Those experiences reinforced my desire to learn from people who have repeatedly helped founders succeed. The opportunity to work alongside someone like you, and to see firsthand how exceptional founders are identified, supported, and challenged from the earliest stages, would help me develop the judgment I hope to one day apply toward building stronger entrepreneurial ecosystems across Africa.

The Opportunity

The Chief of Staff role isn't about owning a single function. It's about increasing leverage across many of them. The job requires someone who can move between strategy and execution, evaluate opportunities, manage competing priorities, build systems, communicate clearly, and continuously look for better ways of working.

While I haven't held the title before, the underlying work has been a consistent theme throughout my career.

Role Fit

Managing and evaluating opportunities

At Wells Fargo's Strategic Partnerships team, I managed and tracked emerging technology opportunities from initial sourcing through proof of concept. I worked with business lines to identify strategic problems, evaluated companies for strategic fit, coordinated cross-functional stakeholders, and supported the diligence process that determined whether a solution moved forward.

Research and diligence

My role required researching companies, markets, and technologies to identify potential partners and assess their strategic value. Beyond sourcing new opportunities, I conducted due diligence throughout the proof-of-concept process.

Special projects and operational execution

Across consulting and corporate strategy roles, I've led projects designed to improve how our organizations operate. Recent examples include redesigning an enterprise sales reporting process to eliminate redundant work across the Global Payments and Liquidity Sales organization and leading initiatives to accelerate third-party onboarding by identifying and removing internal process bottlenecks.

Building tools that create leverage

Much of my current work focuses on making our Treasury Sales teams more effective. My team designs processes and tools that simplify how Treasury Management Consultants manage clients and book business. More recently, I've incorporated AI into those workflows by using call summarization and automation to reduce the manual input required from Treasury Management Consultants, improving both efficiency and data quality for the analyses I produce.

Executive support and decision preparation

Supporting executive decision-making has been a consistent theme throughout my career. At Wells Fargo, I prepared materials for meetings with private equity and venture capital firms during my time on Strategic Partnerships. In my current role, I develop executive briefing materials for CEO-client meetings, synthesizing treasury relationships, client context, and key discussion points so leadership can focus on the decisions that matter most.

Project and stakeholder management

Whether coordinating innovation initiatives, leading cross-functional strategy projects, or supporting large-scale events, my work has consistently required bringing together multiple stakeholders, aligning competing priorities, and driving execution. Most recently, I helped plan two of Wells Fargo's annual Innovation Summits, building on similar experience supporting founder programming through Founder Institute Sydney and the Washington DC Economic Partnership.

Risks

No direct venture fund experience

I haven't worked inside a venture fund, so there will be a learning curve around fund operations, investment workflows, and operating style.

Unconventional path

My background spans scientific research, engineering, entrepreneurship, operations, consulting, corporate strategy, and strategic partnerships rather than a traditional venture path. While unconventional, it has developed the breadth this role demands: analytical thinking, operational execution, executive communication, and comfort navigating ambiguity.

Mitigants

The posting explicitly states this is not a partner-track investing role. It's an operating role that values curiosity, execution, organization, initiative, and the ability to build systems that make others more effective.

Those are the skills I've intentionally developed throughout my career.

Whether building automations, leading strategic initiatives, preparing executives for critical meetings, or improving operational processes, I've consistently gravitated toward work that creates leverage. This project is simply another example of that instinct.

Recommendation

Proceed to Conversation

The question isn't whether I've already been a Chief of Staff. It's whether my experience suggests I could quickly become an exceptional one.

The pattern is consistent: I seek out complex problems, build systems that improve how people work, communicate clearly with senior leaders, and enjoy operating behind the scenes where thoughtful execution has an outsized impact. That's one of the reasons this role resonates with me. I don't aspire to be the person in the spotlight. I enjoy being the person who helps make everything around them work better.