12 Essential Chief of Staff Thought Leaders Globally (2026)

Last updated: June 2026

As of June 2026, the role of chief of staff is one of the most strategically consequential and least formally defined positions in modern organisations. The people on this list have done more to define, professionalise, and teach the chief of staff function than almost anyone else in the world. They are the coaches, authors, community builders, and practitioners whose work has given thousands of people in the role a language, a framework, and a professional home.

The chief of staff role has moved decisively from its military and government origins into corporate life at every scale. According to the 2025 Chief of Staff Salary Report published by the Chief of Staff Network, average compensation for the role reached $167,954 in 2025, up 8.5 percent year over year, with nearly one in four chiefs of staff now earning above $200,000. That trajectory signals not just a well-paid function but a maturing profession. Demand continues to grow in 2025 and 2026, driven by increasing executive bandwidth constraints and the realisation that a skilled chief of staff is not a luxury but a leverage mechanism.

This list is not a ranking. Every person here was selected on the basis of documented, current contribution to the chief of staff conversation through published work, community building, coaching practice, or practitioner output confirmed through independent sources in 2025 or 2026. The list is intentionally small because the verified pool of people who write, teach, and build specifically around the CoS role is genuinely compact. Rather than pad it with practitioners who once held the title, this list features the people who are actively shaping what the role means today.

One honest note on geography: the people currently shaping the CoS thought leadership conversation are disproportionately based in the United States. That reflects the current concentration of community infrastructure, publishing, and professional development platforms in North America. The field is growing globally, and it is reasonable to expect more international voices to emerge as the role continues to professionalise outside the US. If you are a chief of staff in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere, the frameworks and conversations these people have built apply directly to your work even if they were built from American soil.

Organisations can book Jonno White, author of Step Up or Step Out (10,000+ copies sold), to facilitate executive offsites and Working Genius workshops that address the exact leadership alignment challenges chiefs of staff manage every day. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss.

Why the Chief of Staff Role Matters

The chief of staff sits at one of the most complex intersections in any organisation: between the principal and the rest of the team, between strategy and execution, between what the leader intends and what the organisation actually does. The role is not a glorified executive assistant, and it is not a deputy CEO. It is something altogether different: a strategic partner whose value lies precisely in the breadth of that positioning rather than depth in any one function.

Research from McKinsey has consistently found that executive alignment on vision and strategy is one of the strongest predictors of organisational performance. The chief of staff is often the person who makes that alignment possible by managing the operating rhythm, clearing the path for decisions, and absorbing the coordination costs that would otherwise fragment senior leadership attention. Yet for most of the role's modern history, there has been no established curriculum, no credential, and no community to turn to. The people on this list changed that. They built the resources, the networks, and the intellectual frameworks that have transformed a once-invisible role into a recognised profession.

To explore working with Jonno White as a facilitator who understands the leadership alignment challenges chiefs of staff navigate every day, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

For more on how executive team structure affects performance, read the post "10 Warning Signs Your Executive Team Is Dysfunctional" at consultclarity.org/post/signs-executive-team-dysfunctional.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was evaluated against three criteria. First, documented, current contribution to the chief of staff conversation through published work, community building, coaching practice, or substantive practitioner output. Second, active engagement with the professional conversation in 2025 or 2026, not a reputation resting on earlier work alone. Third, independent verification of the current role from at least two sources. The list is small because the standards are high.

Category 1: Community Builders and Network Founders

The chief of staff has long been one of the loneliest roles in an organisation. The people in this category changed that by building the communities, events, and platforms that gave chiefs of staff a professional home and a peer group. Scott Amenta, Tom Guthrie, Clara Ma, and David Nebinski each recognised that chiefs of staff needed connection and community more than they needed any particular framework. Their work created the infrastructure through which the role professionalises.

1. Scott Amenta

Scott Amenta is the Founder of the Chief of Staff Network, the global professional organisation for chiefs of staff that has built a community of thousands of practitioners across the US, Europe, and beyond. Amenta founded the network in 2017 after serving in a chief of staff role at an early-stage startup, recognising that the role had almost no community, resources, or peer support available to people entering it for the first time. The Chief of Staff Network now hosts events globally, including the annual Chief of Staff Connect conference series running across San Francisco, New York, and London in 2026, and produces the annual Chief of Staff Salary Report that has become the primary benchmarking resource for compensation in the field.

Amenta's contribution to the conversation is most clearly visible in a consistent framing of the CoS role as a professional function rather than a temporary stepping stone. The Chief of Staff Network's 2025 research, which found that 86 percent of chiefs of staff use AI daily while only 7.3 percent are what the network calls AI-native, reflects the depth of applied research the community now conducts. The network has become the default home for anyone serious about the role globally.

2. Tom Guthrie

Tom Guthrie is the President and Co-Founder of the Chief of Staff Network, working alongside Scott Amenta to grow the organisation into its current global footprint. Guthrie has been particularly visible in the conversation around AI and the evolution of the role, having co-hosted sessions at Chief of Staff Connect events in 2025 where nearly a hundred practitioners gathered in San Francisco to examine how AI adoption is changing what chiefs of staff do and how they should lead transformation when adoption is uneven across an organisation. In 2026, Guthrie has been a leading voice in articulating the network's theme of "From Force Multiplier to Builder," which frames the most important career development shift for practitioners at mid-career: moving from amplifying the principal's priorities to owning the systems, programmes, and operating models that drive measurable outcomes.

Guthrie writes for the Chief of Staff Network's blog on topics including principal relationships, operating rhythm, and career architecture for the role. The AI Readiness Diagnostic that the network produced under Guthrie's co-leadership, which found most chiefs of staff are AI users but not yet AI-native practitioners, has shaped how the field is thinking about skills development in the next phase of the role's evolution.

3. Clara Ma

Clara Ma is the Founder and CEO of Ask a Chief of Staff, a community and career development platform she created after serving as a chief of staff at an early-stage startup and finding that the role had almost no structured support infrastructure for people entering it. The community now serves thousands of chiefs of staff with biweekly workshops, a mentorship directory, and placement services. Ma built Ask a Chief of Staff from a series of informal LinkedIn conversations and virtual coffee chats with other practitioners into one of the most active online communities in the space.

What distinguishes Ma's contribution is a focus on the human experience of the role: the isolation, the ambiguity, the difficulty of setting boundaries when the job requires absorbing and redirecting the principal's most pressing challenges. The writing and community programming address these dimensions with a level of practical honesty that is rare in professional development content. The Ask a Chief of Staff newsletter reaches thousands of practitioners and has become a reliable weekly resource for people navigating the full range of challenges the role presents.

4. David Nebinski

David Nebinski spent over four years as the lead community manager at the Chief of Staff Network, where he hosted hundreds of in-person and virtual events globally and built and scaled the Chief of Staff Network podcast into the most listened-to podcast in the space. In March 2026, Nebinski co-hosted the Community-Led Growth Conference and continues to host Chief of Staff events in New York while producing the A Chief of Staff newsletter and podcast. The work Nebinski did at the Chief of Staff Network is the operational engine behind much of the community infrastructure practitioners now take for granted: regular local events, a global online community, and a curated programme of expert-led sessions that make practitioner knowledge accessible rather than locked behind expensive conferences.

Nebinski's contribution is less visible as intellectual output and more visible as connective tissue. The work created the conditions for a chief of staff in Auckland or Amsterdam to encounter the same quality of community and connection available in New York or San Francisco. The 2026 independent work continues to build that infrastructure across new channels.

Category 2: Educators, Authors, and Coaches

The people in this category shaped the way chiefs of staff learn the role by writing the books, building the courses, running the coaching practices, and hosting the podcasts that practitioners turn to when they need to understand what excellent looks like.

5. Maggie Olson

Maggie Olson is the Founder and CEO of Nova Chief of Staff, the first-of-its-kind certification and development platform for chiefs of staff. Olson built Nova after her own experience as the first chief of staff to the President of the T-Mobile Business Group, where she created the chief of staff model from the ground up and built a team to support the President, several SVPs, and over 5,000 employees. She found almost no resources for people entering the role and built the course she wished had existed.

Nova's certification has now been completed by students across more than 45 countries from 1,400 companies. The curriculum covers the full scope of the CoS function, from business planning and executive project management to communications, gap-filling, and the first 90 days in the role. Olson's willingness to teach the practical, operational side of the job rather than the conceptual framework is what sets Nova apart. The certification has become a credible pre-entry and early-career development tool that is reshaping how organisations think about hiring for the role.

For more on facilitating executive team alignment at the same level chiefs of staff are operating, see Jonno White's post "10 Proven Executive Offsite Agenda Templates 2026" at consultclarity.org/post/executive-offsite-agenda-templates.

6. Emily Sander

Emily Sander is a former chief of staff turned executive leadership coach based in the United States. The host of the Leveraging Leadership podcast, Sander produces two episodes per week, totalling over 256 episodes by February 2026, with a mix of expert interviews and solo episodes offering practical guidance specifically for chiefs of staff, executives, and business professionals. The podcast is one of the most consistently practical resources in the space, covering everything from how to calibrate quickly with a new principal to how to structure feedback conversations with senior stakeholders.

Sander's book Hacking Executive Leadership, alongside a coaching practice at Next Level Coaching, forms a body of work aimed at the specific challenges of the CoS role and the transition to formal executive leadership. The combination of long-form audio content and one-on-one coaching creates one of the most accessible entry points in the field for practitioners who learn by listening rather than reading.

7. Tyler Parris

Tyler Parris is a Hudson-certified executive coach and the author of Chief of Staff: The Strategic Partner Who Will Revolutionize Your Organization, one of the first and most comprehensive books written specifically about the corporate chief of staff role. Parris wrote the book after serving as a corporate chief of staff, finding almost nothing in the published literature about how the role functioned in private sector organisations rather than government or military contexts. The book draws on interviews with chiefs of staff and C-suite executives globally, providing a framework that has shaped how many organisations structure the role today.

Parris continues to advise and coach through a LinkedIn presence and a broader coaching practice. The 2025 posts on the evolution of the role, including commentary on AI's impact on the strategic partner relationship, demonstrate ongoing engagement with the current state of the conversation rather than simply maintaining a reputation built on earlier work.

8. Hallie Warner

Hallie Warner is the Founder and Owner of Founder and Force Multiplier, a coaching and consulting business launched after more than fifteen years providing executive support and strategic counsel, including serving as chief of staff to the Founder and CEO of Adam Hergenrother Companies for over a decade. Warner co-authored the book The Founder and the Force Multiplier: How Entrepreneurs and Executive Assistants Achieve More Together with Adam Hergenrother, which became an Amazon number one best seller and introduced the "force multiplier" framing that has become one of the most useful ways of describing what a chief of staff or right-hand partner actually does at best.

Warner now provides coaching and content to help entrepreneurs and leaders find the right right-hand partner, whatever exact title that person holds. The Founder and Force Multiplier podcast, which Warner continues to host, explores how founders and their strategic partners work together across the full range of decisions and challenges involved in building a business. The body of work produced is one of the most practically grounded perspectives on the role available anywhere.

Category 3: Practitioners Who Shaped the Conversation

The people in this category came to thought leadership through deep practitioner experience in the role itself. They are former chiefs of staff or current practitioners whose public writing, teaching, and community contributions have shaped how the field understands the function.

9. Brian Rumao

Brian Rumao served as VP and Chief of Staff to the CEO of LinkedIn for over six years, working alongside Jeff Weiner to manage strategic initiatives, build the operating rhythm of the business, and lead the cross-functional integration programme following LinkedIn's $26 billion acquisition by Microsoft in 2016. Rumao is now Managing Director of Next Play Ventures alongside Weiner, where coaching and investment in entrepreneurial leaders continues. The writing on the chief of staff role, including a widely read 2014 article titled "What Does a Chief of Staff Do?", sparked one of the earliest mainstream corporate conversations about the function and has continued to shape how practitioners and organisations frame the role.

Rumao also created the "Become a Chief of Staff" LinkedIn Learning course, which has introduced the role to a significant audience of professionals considering or preparing for it. The combination of practitioner depth, a high-profile principal relationship, and a genuine commitment to making the role visible and understandable makes Rumao one of the most influential voices the CoS conversation has produced.

10. David Kirby

David Kirby is the author of The Ultimate Chief of Staff Guide, published in 2025, and a former chief of staff at Ford Motor Company. The book is one of the most recent and comprehensive practitioner guides in the space, written from direct experience in one of the world's largest and most complex organisations. The book covers how to navigate the role at enterprise scale, where the principal relationship spans a far larger and more politically complex organisation than the startup context most CoS literature assumes.

Kirby's contribution is particularly valuable because the majority of CoS literature is written from a startup or scale-up perspective. The work fills a significant gap by documenting how the role functions in large, legacy organisations with deeply established hierarchies and political dynamics that a chief of staff must navigate carefully and credibly.

11. Tristan Lim

Tristan Lim is an executive coach and Fellow at the Chief of Staff Network, running a coaching practice called Beyond Founders that focuses on the human and psychological dimensions of the chief of staff and founder relationship. A former chief of staff at Commsor, Lim has written extensively on burnout in the role, the hidden cost of being the "bridge" that holds an organisation together while having little formal authority, and the internal work that often goes unaddressed when chiefs of staff develop their skills. The April 2026 writing for the Chief of Staff Network blog, examining how practitioner excellence and formal authority diverge over time, has been one of the more honest and resonant pieces in the recent conversation.

Lim brings a coaching psychology lens to a space that often focuses on operational skills at the expense of the personal sustainability of the people doing the work. That perspective is increasingly important as the role scales and as more practitioners encounter the kind of burnout that comes from being indispensable to a system while having limited power to shape its direction.

12. Elise Kennedy

Elise Kennedy is a three-time chief of staff with two company exits, and the author of the Your Chief of Staff newsletter on Substack, a weekly resource launched for strategic operators in the CoS and adjacent space in late 2025. The newsletter applies the perspective of someone who has navigated the role through multiple full cycles of company building and exit, giving the writing a practical depth that is difficult to replicate without that specific experience. The newsletter reaches a readership of chiefs of staff, EAs, and other people in operational roles who are looking for applied guidance rather than conceptual frameworks.

Kennedy's focus on the strategic operator rather than the CoS title specifically is one of the more useful contributions to the conversation: the skills, judgment, and positioning challenges in the writing are relevant to anyone doing force multiplier work, whatever their exact job title happens to be.

Notable Voices Worth Knowing

A small number of voices sit just outside this list because their contribution, while significant, is either primarily historical or not specifically focused on the chief of staff role itself. Patrick Lencioni's organisational health and team cohesion frameworks are widely used by chiefs of staff to manage leadership team alignment, but the CoS-specific application is one small part of a much broader body of work. The Chief of Staff Association (csa.org), a UK-based international membership body with members in more than 50 countries and a peer-reviewed professional journal, is building a serious body of research and credentialing infrastructure for the global profession and is worth following even though it is an institution rather than an individual. Jeremy Burrows, host of the Leader Assistant Podcast, has produced a substantial body of content on the EA to CoS transition that has been valuable for many practitioners. Adam Hergenrother, whose partnership with a chief of staff produced the book and the "force multiplier" framing that has been influential in the space, is also worth noting as the principal whose documented partnership with Hallie Warner became one of the most studied examples of the relationship at its best.

Common Mistakes Chiefs of Staff Make

The most common mistake chiefs of staff make is not a skill gap. It is a positioning gap. Many people entering the role understand the operational side quite well: running the cadence, managing the inbox, overseeing strategic projects. What they underestimate is the political and relational complexity of the principal relationship itself. A chief of staff who is operationally competent but relationally misaligned with the principal will burn through significant goodwill and create confusion rather than clarity. The framing Scott Amenta uses in the Chief of Staff Network is useful here: the question is not whether you are capable but whether the principal treats you as a confidant. That treatment is not earned through competence alone. It is earned through a specific kind of trust-building that requires patience, judgment, and willingness to bring thinking to the table before it is polished.

A second common mistake is defining the role too narrowly. Many chiefs of staff interpret the role as "managing the principal's priorities," which is only half of the function. The other half is managing the organisation's relationship with the principal, which means being a conduit, interpreter, and occasionally a friction-reducer between the CEO and the rest of the leadership team. Chiefs of staff who focus only inward miss the organisational leverage their position creates.

A third mistake is staying in the role too long without evolving the model. Tom Guthrie's framing of "From Force Multiplier to Builder" captures this well: at a certain point, the best chiefs of staff need to shift from amplifying the principal's work to owning discrete programmes and outcomes themselves. Those who do not make that shift can find the role becomes limiting rather than generative.

A fourth mistake is using the role as a waiting room for the "real" next job rather than investing in it as a genuine discipline with its own skills and career logic. The people on this list have done as much as anyone to make that reframing possible.

For Jonno White's approach to executive team alignment and facilitation, which addresses many of the leadership dynamics chiefs of staff manage, see the post "21 Best Executive Team Offsite Facilitators (2026)" at consultclarity.org/post/executive-team-offsite-facilitators.

Implementation Guide: How to Use This List

If you are a chief of staff looking to develop, the most direct entry point is the Chief of Staff Network. Scott Amenta and Tom Guthrie's organisation provides access to events, peer learning, salary benchmarking, and an annual conference programme that will put you in the same room as the most experienced practitioners in the space. The membership cost is modest relative to the professional development value.

If you are new to the role or aspiring to it, Maggie Olson's Nova Chief of Staff certification is the most structured pre-entry curriculum available. The course covers the practical functions of the role across a scope that no book or podcast replicates, and the certification now carries genuine credibility with hiring organisations.

If you are a founder or CEO thinking about whether to hire a chief of staff, Hallie Warner's The Founder and the Force Multiplier and Tyler Parris's Chief of Staff are both worth reading. They approach the question from different angles: Warner from the practitioner side of a long partnership, Parris from a research and framework perspective. Reading both gives a genuinely rounded view of what you are hiring for.

If you are a chief of staff dealing with burnout or the psychological weight of the role, Tristan Lim's work at Beyond Founders and writing for the Chief of Staff Network addresses those dimensions with unusual honesty. The role is genuinely hard in ways that operational training does not prepare you for, and having access to a coach or mentor who has navigated that experience matters.

The podcasts produced by Emily Sander (Leveraging Leadership) and the Chief of Staff Network are the easiest low-friction way to stay current with what the best practitioners are thinking about. Both produce content specifically for the role rather than for leadership broadly.

Organisations wanting to create the conditions in which a chief of staff can do their best work will find that investing in executive team health and clarity is the highest-leverage thing a CEO can do. Hire Jonno White to facilitate your executive team offsite or Working Genius workshop and build the team cohesion and strategic clarity that makes your chief of staff's job possible rather than impossible. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss what that engagement could look like. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

For more on building executive team alignment, see Jonno White's post "10 Proven Executive Offsite Agenda Templates 2026" at consultclarity.org/post/executive-offsite-agenda-templates.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a chief of staff actually do?

A chief of staff is the strategic partner to a senior executive, typically a CEO or president, who manages the operating rhythm of the organisation, oversees cross-functional strategic initiatives, and serves as a trusted thought partner and execution engine. The role varies significantly by organisation, but its core function is to multiply the principal's impact by absorbing coordination costs, managing information flow, and creating alignment between intent and execution.

What is the difference between a chief of staff and a COO?

A COO typically owns the operations of the business directly, with a functional team reporting through the COO and formal P&L or operational accountability. A chief of staff operates with influence rather than direct authority, moving across functions without owning any of them, and derives leverage from proximity to the principal rather than from a defined functional domain.

How is a chief of staff different from an executive assistant?

An executive assistant focuses on administrative and logistical support: managing the principal's schedule, correspondence, and day-to-day operational needs. A chief of staff focuses on strategic and cross-functional work: managing major projects, creating organisational alignment, and serving as a thought partner on complex decisions. The roles are complementary, and many organisations find the combination of a strong EA and a skilled chief of staff creates what practitioners call the executive office trifecta.

How do I become a chief of staff?

Most chiefs of staff come from consulting, strategy, finance, or executive assistant backgrounds, but there is no single pathway. The role rewards breadth of experience over depth in any one function. Building skills in communication, project management, stakeholder navigation, and executive presence is more important than any particular credential. Maggie Olson's Nova Chief of Staff certification is one of the most practical structured development options currently available.

Is the chief of staff role growing?

Yes, substantially. According to the Chief of Staff Network's 2025 Salary Report, demand for the role continues to grow across company sizes and industries. Average compensation rose 8.5 percent year over year to $167,954 in 2025, with nearly one in four chiefs of staff earning above $200,000. The role is no longer concentrated in technology companies or large enterprises, and the emergence of dedicated communities, certifications, and research institutions suggests the profession is maturing rapidly.

What is the most common mistake chiefs of staff make?

The most common mistake is underestimating the relational complexity of the principal relationship. Operational competence is necessary but not sufficient. The trust that makes a chief of staff effective is built through a specific combination of judgment, discretion, proactivity, and the willingness to surface thinking before it is polished rather than presenting only finished conclusions.

Final Thoughts

The chief of staff role has moved, in the space of a decade, from a title most corporate professionals had never encountered to one of the most sought-after positions in modern organisations. The 12 people on this list have done more than almost anyone else to make that shift possible: by writing the first books, building the first communities, creating the first certifications, and producing the content that gave practitioners a professional identity rather than just a job title.

As of June 2026, the conversation is accelerating. The intersection of AI and the CoS function is producing some of the most interesting practitioner thinking in years, as people in the role grapple with which parts of their work can be augmented and which require the specifically human judgment that makes a great chief of staff irreplaceable. The people on this list are at the centre of that conversation. Following them is the fastest way to stay current with where the profession is heading.

Organisations wanting to build the kind of leadership team clarity and cohesion that makes a chief of staff's work genuinely possible should consider what it would mean to invest in a proper executive offsite with skilled facilitation. Bring Jonno White in to facilitate a Working Genius workshop or executive team offsite and create the conditions for real alignment. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, author of Step Up or Step Out, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected. To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Sources

Chief of Staff Network, 2025 Chief of Staff Salary Report. Nova Chief of Staff. Chief of Staff Association.

Next Read

The chief of staff is often the person responsible for planning and managing the executive team offsite. For everything a chief of staff or executive leader needs to run a high-impact offsite, including proven agenda templates and facilitation guidance, read Jonno White's post "10 Proven Executive Offsite Agenda Templates 2026."

Keep reading: consultclarity.org/post/executive-offsite-agenda-templates