Kathy Gagne

About

Operations and organizational effectiveness advisor who builds scalable playbooks and maturity-based operating frameworks for growing organizations, including investment portfolio companies. Has led change and regulatory adoption work in a large financial institution and coached a rapidly scaling fintech founder/exec team to improve trust, delegation, and decision-making.

Experience

Key Strengths

• Built scalable HR/people-ops playbooks for portfolio companies with self-assessment and maturity staging
• Diagnoses operational issues through multi-stakeholder/user input rather than leader-only perspective
• Leads collaborative solution design to increase buy-in and implementation success
• Successfully drove adoption of government regulatory requirements within a large financial institution amid resistance
• Coached a fintech founder through delegation and trust-building to remove founder bottlenecks and empower leadership team
• Balances strategic advising with hands-on execution support (shadowing leaders, ghostwriting, drafting communications)

Reference Highlights

• excellent at assessing and improving organizational systems/processes
• thoughtful
• knowledgeable
• good listener
• supportive
• empathetic
• helped structure business functions
• effective mentor
• streamlined processes
• restructured architecture discipline
• reduced staff by 30%
• helped think through tactics during a political struggle
• would be a good addition to any organization
• zone of genius in organizational systems and processes
• detail-oriented and thorough
• expertise in internal and client-facing operations
• identified scaling gaps proactively
• built streamlined operations framework
• rebuilt intake/contract/recruiting systems from the ground up
• reduced proposal and onboarding turnaround time by 40%
• intentional, tailored approach to client targeting and networking
• strong listener
• effective mentor/advisor to senior leaders
• thoughtful discovery approach
• asset to fast-growing startup teams