Hi {{first_name|there}},
This week we’re exploring what the Chief of Staff seat looks like when the stakes are policy rather than product, and what one sector already knows that another is only now learning. Anna Aden joins Tristan Lim on the podcast to discuss her career and learnings as the Chief of Staff, Asia Pacific at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Chief of Staff Connect New York is also four weeks out. And we’re continuing to add new events virtual and in-person between now and December.
Brev is sponsoring this week. Their CEO reviews movies for bad execution, which is funnier than it sounds, and there's a Michelin dinner attached to it.
🎙️ What AI policy is borrowing from humanitarian work
Every humanitarian program on earth runs on a set of principles written to keep the work from being captured by whoever is funding it or whoever happens to hold power. Anna Aden, Chief of Staff to the Managing Director for Asia Pacific at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, spent years operating inside those principles before she ever touched a tech policy question. Then she started working on AI policy and AI safety and recognized the structure immediately.
THE CHIEF OF STAFF PODCAST
What AI Policy Is Borrowing From Humanitarian Work with Anna Aden
Read OpenAI's mission to ensure AI benefits all of humanity, or Anthropic's Claude Constitution, next to the humanitarian principles, and the family resemblance is hard to miss. One group has been working out how to serve the collective good for decades, at scale, under pressure, with real consequences for getting it wrong. A different group, mostly from tech, is now arriving at the same questions with far more leverage and far less mileage. Anna points to Anthropic hiring PhD philosophers as the signal that the two are finally finding each other.
With the Chief of Staff role, we talk a lot about bridging internally and that person being the bridge, but that’s equally as important across industries.
Most of us built our bridging instinct inside one company. Anna's career suggests the more valuable version works across sectors that have never had a reason to talk. The rest of the episode is the job itself: priorities set by working out which dependencies are load-bearing, a London HQ eight time zones from her desk, the Harvard study that found burnout was worse under bad leadership than in an actual war zone, and the one-page handover note that turned out to be exactly enough.
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🤝 Chief of Staff Connect: New York, October 22 to 23
Four weeks out, and 150+ Chiefs of Staff are expected at our largest Connect yet. We’ll spend two days in Times Square on the theme: From Force Multiplier to Builder, the shift from amplifying leaders behind the scenes to owning the systems and operating models that move the business.
30+ expert voices across two days, headlined by a Day 1 fireside with Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering and The Art of Fighting, on how to host the hard conversation instead of smoothing it over. Plus more featured conversations and workshops:
What CEOs actually need from a Chief of Staff. Laurent Faracci, CEO of Lifestyles Healthcare, alongside his own Chief of Staff, on what they want, what frustrates them, and what they mean when they ask you to build. Direct feedback from the other side of the desk, which you rarely get unfiltered.
From Air Traffic Controller to AI Orchestrator. Julia Govberg (Chief of Staff, Clay) and Justin Shore (Chief of Staff, Wing) on running live AI deployments inside large organizations: what they built, what broke, and how the role shifts when you own the AI agenda rather than coordinating someone else's.
Industry breakouts. Finance with Citi and The D.E. Shaw Group, education with Harvard Graduate School of Education and NYU Steinhardt, and entertainment with the Chiefs of Staff to Questlove and Kevin Hart.
The State of the Chief of Staff. Our annual data on the role: compensation, reporting structures, AI adoption, and where the job leads next.
You Can't Process Your Way to Strategy. Kailey Crafts-Thimmig, Creator and Chief of Staff at Scale AI, on the point where better process stops producing better outcomes, and what strategic contribution looks like once you're past it.
Building Your CEO, a managing up masterclass. Juhi Kabra on giving hard feedback, protecting your principal's decision capacity, and recognizing when the relationship has run its course. Role-play included, so you practice the conversation before you need to have it.
What I Wish I Knew. A closing panel of Chiefs of Staff who have moved on from the role, including Clarissa Bukhan, Head of Global Partner Engagement at Google, on what they only understood after leaving.
Early Bird has closed. Regular Admission is open, and bundling with PRO+ membership saves up to 28%.
📅 Upcoming events
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If Anna's episode lands for you, the Singapore Forum in December is the room where that conversation keeps going. And if you have been waiting on New York, remaining tickets are going quickly!
Scott
