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Breakthrough Energy Ventures Portfolio Company Career Opportunities

Chief of Staff

Heirloom

Heirloom

People & HR, Operations
Brisbane, CA, USA
Posted on Dec 24, 2024

About Us

All across the world, from the azure pools of Turkey and Oman to the travertine terraces of Yellowstone, our planet quietly pulls carbon dioxide from the air and turns it to stone. For eons, Earth has relied on this process to balance its carbon cycle. What if it could be harnessed? What if we could do it faster, in larger quantities, and at a low enough cost to make it an effective tool in the fight against climate change?

At Heirloom, we are turning that into reality. We use the natural carbon capture properties of abundant minerals to pull CO2 from the air, and store it permanently underground. We come to work every day to slow climate change, and are united behind a single, common goal - to remove 1 billion tons of CO2 from the sky by 2035, and to not stop before we get there.

We bring together the precise recipe of science, technology, know-how, and strategy necessary to make low cost, high quality carbon removal a reality. If we’re successful, we will directly mitigate climate change, build a world we can proudly hand over to our children and grandchildren, and catalyze an industry that will rival the largest the world has ever seen. If you want to change the planet, come join us.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

As temperatures continue to rise, individuals from marginalized communities will face the harshest impacts of climate change. We believe wholeheartedly that building a diverse company is critical to Heirloom’s success. To accomplish this, we’ve put recruiting, hiring and retaining individuals from underrepresented groups at the top of our priority list.

We encourage you to apply if you identify as Black, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Hispanic or Latino, LGBTQ+ – or with any other underrepresented group – even if you don’t tick all the boxes in the description below.

Position Overview

The Chief of Staff (CoS) will act as a strategic advisor and operational partner to the CEO and executive team, driving key initiatives, improving organizational efficiency, and ensuring alignment across all business functions. This role is pivotal in supporting the company’s scaling efforts, fostering collaboration, and enabling the leadership team to focus on strategic growth opportunities. These are some flavors of the roles you can expect to play:

  • Enabler: Accelerate decision making time across leaders

  • Insulator: Insulate CEO and other functional heads from being disrupted (let them focus on their key concerns)

  • Connector: Help connect people across teams (break down silos and build company cohesion)

  • Aligner: alignment on meetings and strategic OKRs across experts and teams

  • The Catch-all: catch-all for the leadership team (when new initiatives don’t clearly fall to someone, work the problem until there’s a permanent home)

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Planning & Execution

  • Partner with the CEO to develop and execute strategic initiatives and OKRs.

  • Monitor progress on key goals and provide regular updates to stakeholders.

  • Lead cross-functional projects, ensuring timely execution and alignment with company priorities.

Operational Excellence

  • Identify inefficiencies and implement processes to improve organizational effectiveness.

  • Own internal communication strategies to align teams on priorities and goals.

  • Act as the CEO’s delegate in high-priority meetings and initiatives.

Leadership Support

  • Prepare briefing materials, presentations, and key documents for the CEO and board meetings.

  • Serve as a trusted sounding board to the CEO and leadership team, offering insights and recommendations.

  • Help CEO spend time effectively: work closely with executive assistant to ensure his calendar matches strategic priorities / report weekly actual vs. expected, help prep for important meetings, and ensure the CEO is where he needs to be.

Culture & People

  • Collaborate with HR and leadership to ensure a thriving, inclusive company culture.

  • Drive initiatives to improve employee engagement and retention.

  • Support hiring and onboarding of key talent, especially in leadership roles.

Qualifications

  • Experience: 7+ years in strategy, operations, or a similar role (e.g., management consulting, program/product management). Experience in a high-growth startup is a plus. Direct management experience is also a plus.

  • Education: Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, engineering or a related field; MBA or equivalent experience preferred.

  • Skills and Attributes:

    • Outcome ownership and self-starter mentality: You have demonstrated your ability to own outcomes, be proactive and build ideas & processes from scratch. You have a bias towards data-driven action and are excited to roll up your sleeves and get things done. You thrive in an ambiguous work environment.

    • Operations and strategic excellence: You excel in leading cross-functional, complex initiatives and understand that clear and effective communication is the key to success. You are highly organized and process-driven, with a keen eye for dissecting important details from noise, and prioritizing leadership activities based on their alignment with Heirloom’s strategy.

    • Optimistic persistence: You are a high EQ, people person with a strong desire to make things happen and ability to motivate a team. This includes the ability to positively influence toward outcomes and build relationships across all levels of the organization. You gravitate to the most important projects an organization is not tackling well and handle conflict and challenges with tact and ability to drive alignment.

    • Passion for the mission: You are deeply passionate about rising to the challenge of climate change.

Our Principles

Radical Honesty means we are open, transparent, and inclusive in everything we do. We aren't scared to challenge each other, but bring clear motives and our best intentions when we do.

Persistent Optimism means we carry an infinite amount of optimistic energy with us on our journey, constantly chipping away at what may seem insurmountable.

Maximize our learning rate means we're always in discovery mode. Compounding knowledge is our key to victory - we continuously hone our crafts, seek the fastest paths to new learning, and are quick to absorb new knowledge.

Why you should join Heirloom

  • We are solving the engineering problem of our generation. Climate change is an existential threat, and we need as many of the world’s motivated minds as possible to help. There is no greater challenge or opportunity than fighting climate change.

  • We have done this before. We’re engineers, scientists, and concerned humans from a variety of backgrounds and experiences who are pooling our knowledge and skills to collectively build a more equitable, prosperous future for all.

  • We are a united, resilient, and optimistic bunch. We are all here for the same reason - to slow climate change. We recognize the magnitude of the challenge ahead of us, and believe we can solve it. We can see a hopeful future where we eventually reverse climate change. It won’t be easy, but we won’t quit.

  • We are backed by the best climate partners in the world. We’re well funded by investors from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Ahren Innovation Capital, Carbon Direct, Microsoft, Lowercarbon Capital, ARPA-e and the National Science Foundation. Our early customers include Stripe, Shopify, and Klarna, and we’re building durable partnerships that enable us to tackle this decades-long problem.

Perks and Benefits

  • Robust health coverage. Excellent health, dental and vision insurance covered up to 100% by Heirloom. FSA option.

  • Generous parental leave. 16 weeks paid leave for all Heirloom employees, regardless of primary/secondary caregiver status.

  • Generous stock options.

  • Flexible time off. Unlimited PTO for exempt (salaried) employees & 120 hours for full time non-exempt (hourly) employees.

  • 401(k).

  • Stay healthy. Monthly health and wellness reimbursement.

  • Learn on the job. Robust annual education and conference budget, including airfare and hotel costs.