Chief of Staff · Executive Operations · Product Operations

I build the systems that help leaders make better decisions.

I'm Mildred Abbey. Seven years running executive offices across energy, technology, advisory, and nonprofit operations — for a Group Chairman overseeing three companies at once, and for founders scaling faster than their systems could keep up. One CEO once put it simply: I work like a partner, not support.

7+

Years in Chief of Staff & executive operations roles

3

Companies run under one executive office, concurrently

40%

Faster process turnaround after rebuilding a founder's systems

0

Missed commitments across 4 concurrent programmes, 2.5 years

01 — About

I grew up in Lagos, in a city that teaches you resourcefulness whether you ask for it or not. Systems break. Power goes out mid-meeting. The plan changes twice before lunch. You learn early that the people who get things done aren't the ones with the most resources; they're the ones who can build structure inside a situation that has none.

That instinct has carried me through seven years of executive work for a Group Chairman coordinating three companies across West Africa and the Caribbean; for a founder running three product lines at once; and for an operations function I rebuilt from nothing in sixty days. Different industries, same underlying problem: leadership moving faster than the systems around them can support.

I don't think of myself as someone who supports leadership. I think of myself as someone who removes the friction leadership shouldn't have to deal with, so the real thinking gets the room it needs. Good operations should be invisible. You only notice it when it's missing.

Outside of the day-to-day, I care a great deal about education, specifically, how better systems and policy design can change outcomes for children who are working with less structure than they deserve. It's the same problem at a different scale: how do you build something dependable inside constraints you didn't choose?

02 — Experience

Where I've built this.

Five roles, one thread running through all of them: turning ambiguity into structure, fast.

05/2025 — Present

Chief of Staff to the Group Chairman

Kohath Investment Group · Remote, Suriname / Guyana

  • Own the operational infrastructure of the Chairman's office across three companies: priorities, decisions, communications, and workstream alignment.
  • Coordinate daily with the CFO, Bid Manager, Personal Adviser, Board members, and external and government contacts across West Africa and the Caribbean.
  • Manage Board governance — board packs, meeting coordination, documentation — and lead all RFP/RFI responses for energy contracts in Guyana and Suriname.

02/2023 — 05/2025

Project Coordinator / Chief of Staff to Founder

Burrowes Enterprises · Lagos, Nigeria

  • Managed three concurrent US-market product builds end to end: scoping, sprint planning, build, QA, launch.
  • Owned the founder's executive office across five workstreams; calendar, inbox, briefings, stakeholder correspondence, content and social.
  • Designed KPI dashboards, OKR cycles, and SOP libraries from scratch, cutting process turnaround by 40%.

06/2021 — 01/2023

Operations Lead / Executive & Project Support

PACE Global Services · UK Market

  • Rebuilt the operations function from zero in 60 days: processes, dashboards, accountability systems.
  • Supported delivery of four concurrent programmes over 2.5 years without a missed commitment.
  • Managed 30+ stakeholder relationships across UK/EU government, enterprise, and technology partners; led end-to-end development of a UK logistics marketplace, including UKVI compliance.

01/2020 — 06/2021

Operations and Delivery Analyst

Telesev Nigeria Services Ltd · Lagos, Nigeria

  • Cut manual operational workload by 50% in 90 days through process automation.
  • Introduced the organization's first structured reporting standards, adopted company-wide.

06/2017 — 12/2019

IT Support and Operations Analyst

Icecool Contracts Ltd · Lagos, Nigeria

  • Achieved an 85% same-day resolution rate across 100+ users, consistently above SLA.
  • Built an internal knowledge base that reduced repeat queries and improved team continuity.

03 — How I Think

The reasoning behind the work.

Anyone can list responsibilities. What actually matters is how someone reasons under pressure, with incomplete information, on someone else's behalf. Here's how I approach the parts of the job that don't show up on a task list.

How I prioritize

I sort every request against four questions, in order: does it protect people, does it protect a mission-critical resource, does it protect the organization's reputation, and does it require the executive's own judgment. Everything that clears none of those, I handle or delegate myself — the goal is for the leader to receive only the issues only they can resolve.

How I make decisions

I separate reversible decisions from irreversible ones early. Reversible calls get made fast, by me, without escalation; that's what I'm there for. Irreversible ones get a short brief: the options, the trade-offs, and my recommendation, so the person with the final say spends their time deciding, not gathering context.

How I design a calendar

I build the week around organizational priorities, not incoming requests. Deep work goes first, before the day turns reactive. Internal alignment happens early in the week; external meetings cluster in the afternoons. Every block gets a transition buffer, because preparation and follow-up need somewhere to live too.

How I prepare leaders for a room

Every high-stakes meeting gets a one-page brief: purpose, background, strategic context, the questions likely to come up, and the follow-up plan for the 24 hours after. The goal isn't to script the conversation; it's to make sure nothing in it is a surprise.

How I run meetings

Every meeting I own closes with three things stated out loud, not implied: decisions made, actions agreed, and who owns each one. If a meeting can't produce those, it usually should have been a message.

How I solve problems

I try to solve the problem behind the problem. If a founder keeps missing the same type of deadline, the fix usually isn't a reminder — it's understanding why the deadline keeps arriving unprepared, and rebuilding the process that feeds it.

How I create systems

If I do something the same way twice, I document it the second time. A dashboard, a decision tracker, a knowledge base - none of it needs to be elaborate. It needs to be repeatable by someone who isn't me. That's the actual test of whether something is a system or just a habit I haven't written down.

How I use AI responsibly

AI produces the first part — a draft, a research summary, or a structured brief. I apply the judgment, context, and quality control for the final output, which is where the actual risk and responsibility live. More on where I draw that line below.

04 — Case Studies

Selected work.

Four projects, expanded. Each follows the same structure I use to think through real problems — situation, challenge, approach, and what I'd tell someone doing it again.

Chief of Staff · Multi-Entity

Running the executive office of a Group Chairman across three companies

+

Situation

A Group Chairman needed a single point of coordination across three companies and two countries — priorities, decisions, and external relationships were fragmented across entities with no central owner.

Challenge

With multiple entities in play, the risk wasn't any one function failing — it was something falling through the gap between entities, unnoticed until it was expensive.

Approach

I own the operational infrastructure of the Chairman's office directly: priorities, decisions, communications, and workstream alignment across all three companies, with daily coordination across the CFO, Bid Manager, Personal Adviser, Board, and external and government contacts.

Reasoning

In a multi-entity structure, the highest-leverage role isn't managing one function well — it's making sure nothing depends on any single person's memory to stay connected across entities.

Execution

Manage Board governance end to end — board packs, meeting coordination, documentation — and lead every RFP and RFI response for energy contracts in Guyana and Suriname, coordinating technical and commercial input against compliance deadlines.

Outcome

This is active, ongoing work. [Add current metric once available — e.g. number of RFPs submitted or won, board cadence established]

Lessons learned

Cross-border, multi-entity coordination lives or dies on cadence. A weekly rhythm that touches every entity matters more than any single tool.

Founder's Office · Product Operations

Building the systems behind three simultaneous product launches

+

Situation

A founder was driving three concurrent US-market product builds with a growing executive office and no formal reporting structure underneath it.

Challenge

Coordination relied on memory. No dashboards, no OKR cadence, no SOPs — and the founder's own calendar, inbox, and stakeholder correspondence were absorbing hours that should have gone to the builds themselves.

Approach

I owned the founder's executive office across five workstreams — calendar, inbox, briefings, stakeholder correspondence, content and social — while managing each product build's full lifecycle end to end.

Reasoning

Before adding more people or more process, build the structure that makes the current team's output visible. Visibility is what makes prioritization possible.

Execution

Managed three builds through scoping, sprint planning, build, QA, and launch, coordinating engineering, design, sales, and marketing through Asana, Trello, and Slack. Designed KPI dashboards, OKR cycles, and a full SOP library from scratch.

Outcome

Cut process turnaround by 40% and materially improved leadership visibility across all five workstreams.

Lessons learned

A dashboard only earns its place if it replaces a status-update meeting — not adds one. The ones that stuck were the ones nobody had to be reminded to check.

Operations Lead · UK Market

Rebuilding an operations function from zero

+

Situation

No formal operations function existed. Work was reactive, and delivery depended entirely on individual effort rather than any repeatable process.

Challenge

Stand up process, accountability, and delivery capability fast enough to support live UK-market programmes already underway — without a pause to rebuild.

Approach

Rebuilt the operations function from zero in 60 days: standardized processes, dashboards, and accountability systems, starting with the highest-friction workflows first.

Reasoning

Standardize before you scale. A small number of dependable processes beats a large number of ad hoc ones, especially when multiple programmes are running in parallel.

Execution

Supported delivery of four concurrent programmes over 2.5 years, managed 30+ stakeholder relationships across UK/EU government, enterprise, and technology partners, and led end-to-end development of a UK logistics marketplace — research, business plan, MVP coordination, developer liaison, and UKVI compliance.

Outcome

All four programmes delivered over 2.5 years without a single missed commitment.

Lessons learned

The fastest way to earn trust in a new operations role is a small, visible win in the first two weeks — before asking anyone to change how they work.

Executive Operations Assessment · Nonprofit Client

Designing an executive operating model for a growing nonprofit

+

Situation

A mission-driven nonprofit's leadership needed an honest, outside assessment of how the executive office actually operated — beyond what its org chart suggested.

Challenge

No consistent meeting cadence, no shared dashboard, no decision tracker. Important information lived across emails, meeting notes, and individual memory rather than any shared system.

Approach

Assessed prioritization, calendar design, meeting structure, and knowledge management, then proposed a phased operating model rather than a single large overhaul.

Reasoning

Consistency improves execution more than any individual tool does. The value of a dashboard isn't reporting activity — it's giving leadership visibility into priorities without asking five people for a status update.

Execution

Proposed five recommendations sequenced over 90 days: an executive operating rhythm, a central dashboard, a structured decision tracker, standardized briefing formats, and an institutional knowledge system — each phase building on the one before it.

Outcome

Projected to return at least 5 hours of executive time per week once adopted, alongside concrete 90-day deliverables: a standardized meeting cadence, a live dashboard, a centralized document structure, and a working action tracker.

Lessons learned

Visible quick wins in the first 90 days build the trust needed for the harder structural changes that come after.

05 — Principles

How I operate, in six lines.

Find the root. Not the reminder.

A reminder fixes today. A system fixes every day after it — that's the only version I'll build.

Clarity beats speed.

Fast and wrong costs more time than slow and right — you just pay for it later, with interest.

Systems beat heroics.

If it only works because one person remembered, it isn't finished — it's a liability wearing a win.

Document once. Reuse forever.

The second time I do something the same way, it stops being a task and becomes a process.

Good operations make leadership look effortless.

You're not meant to see the plumbing. You're just meant to notice the water always runs.

Always ask: what breaks next?

Today's fire was almost always yesterday's warning sign, ignored because nothing broke — yet.

06 — Executive Toolkit

The tools, and what I actually use them for.

Not a logo wall — a working kit. Each of these earns its place because of a specific job it does well.

Asana & Trello

Execution tracking across concurrent workstreams — who owns what, by when, and what's actually blocked versus what just looks blocked.

Notion

Where knowledge lives after a decision is made — decision logs, SOP libraries, and the running record of "why we did it this way."

Monday.com, Jira & Airtable

Structured project and programme tracking when work needs more rigor than a kanban board — sprint cycles, dependencies, and reporting views for leadership.

Slack & MS Teams

For speed, not for decisions. If something needs a real decision trail, it moves to a document — chat is where we agree to go look at it.

ChatGPT & Claude

First-draft engines for briefs, research synthesis, and meeting prep. Used to produce the first 80% — never the final call on anything involving judgment.

Microsoft Office & Google Workspace

The shared home base — Docs and Word for briefs, Sheets and Excel for anything tracked live, Calendar as the single source of truth for time.

Confluence

Institutional knowledge base for teams that need documentation to outlive any one person's memory — board resources, SOPs, and onboarding material.

Zoom & Calendly

External and high-stakes calls, recorded when appropriate. Calendly removes the back-and-forth from scheduling without overriding protected time.

Power Automate

Workflow automation for the repetitive parts — follow-up tasks after meetings, deadline reminders, and weekly status reports assembled from project updates.

07 — On AI

Where AI belongs in this job, and where it doesn't.

I use AI as a productivity partner, not a decision-maker. It produces the first part — a draft, a research summary, or a structured brief. I apply the judgment, context, and quality control for the final output, which is where the actual risk and responsibility live.

Where I use it

  • First drafts of executive emails, board updates, briefing notes, and presentations
  • Research before meetings — understanding an organization, its priorities, and recent developments faster than reading every source start to finish
  • Meeting preparation — turning notes into structured briefs, and briefs into post-meeting summaries with owners and deadlines
  • Summarizing progress across multiple simultaneous projects to flag what actually needs executive attention
  • Knowledge management — natural-language retrieval across board papers, partnership records, and past decisions
  • Workflow automation for repetitive, well-defined tasks

Where I don't

  • Strategic decisions — AI can inform a decision, it shouldn't make one
  • Representing a leader in conversations with government officials, donors, investors, or board members
  • Sensitive personnel matters — these require judgment, relationship, and context a tool can't hold
  • People decisions — hiring, letting go, restructuring
  • Anything going into an executive briefing without my own verification first — AI is an excellent starting point, but accuracy stays my responsibility

The line, roughly: AI is excellent at expanding what I can consider. It has no place deciding what I stand behind.

09 — Recommendations

What people say after working with me.

[Exact quote pending]

Ahead of a client meeting, I researched the client's business, anticipated their likely questions, and built a briefing. During the meeting, I answered several of those questions directly and helped move the conversation forward. Afterward, the CEO thanked me personally, put it in writing, and the next day told the full team this was the level of ownership he wanted everyone to bring.

Sean

Burrowes Enterprises — placeholder, pending exact quote

[Testimonial placeholder — add quote]

Name

Role, Company

10 — Resume

The full record, in one document.

Everything here in narrative form is also available as a single, formatted document.

Education

BSc, Computer Science
University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Certifications

  • AI Prompt Engineering — Government of Dubai
  • Product Management Foundations — Enoverlab
  • Project & Product Management — Great Learning / Udemy
  • Technical Product Management — Enoverlab (in progress)
  • AI Skills for Women — INCO Founderz Business School
Download Resume (PDF)

11 — Contact

If this reads like how you're trying to run things, let's talk.

Location

Lagos, Nigeria — Remote (GMT+1)