Leah Zalinski
Fractional COO, growth strategist, coach, and facilitator based in Chicago.
For more than 20 years, I've worked inside complex organizations and global agency environments, helping teams deliver ambitious work for brands including YouTube, Allstate, Corona, and Mars Wrigley. I'm usually the person people call when the work itself is strong but the way it runs is starting to strain.
Career highlights
Gather & Grow
Co-founder, Fractional COO and operations leader
Co-built a leadership development and growth strategy practice, leading sales, project management, execution, and delivery.
Inzovu
Operations leadership
Ongoing contributor to Inzovu's innovative design and research practice.
Rise Strategy Group
Chief Operating Officer
Oversaw client services and operations across a boutique agency that grew 50% under my time in the role. Higher retainers, stronger and more consistent work quality, reliable workflows that delivered great work. This was the role that kicked off my pursuit of fractional work.
Weber Shandwick
EVP, North America Client Operations
Led and scaled the project management practice across the Central and West offices, partnering with agency leadership to build the program requirements and solutions that let teams deliver flawlessly against client objectives. Partnered with Fortune 500 clients across a wide range of integrated programs, building the planning and partnership practices behind a consistent track record of delivery.
How I work
I'm warm and encouraging, and direct and unwilling to collude with avoidance. Reflective, and practical. A strategist, and an operator who knows what implementation requires. Focused on the whole system, and attentive to the individual person in front of me. Calm and steady, and oriented toward real momentum.
I enter the world of your business first: not just how it's described, but how it actually works. I listen at more than one level, for the facts and for what's underneath them. Then I help you find the leverage point and build a rhythm that holds, with the people who'll carry it forward.
Beyond the resume
I'm Chicago-based, a mother of three boys, a Scouting volunteer, and a writer. Protecting time to feel like a whole person, not just a title, isn't a side note to how I lead. It's evidence of it.
Find me elsewhere
Leah is a fantastic leader with a natural ability to quickly understand people, their needs, and their motivations, and then work collaboratively with them toward solutions that help them unlock their potential. Her ability to quickly assess a complex situation and create a vision for moving from point A to point B always impresses me.