Chief of Staff, Commercial

Helaina is a VC-backed biotech startup creating a new category of functional food products.

Our vision is to bring the functional properties of human proteins to food. Helaina will be the first company to put human milk proteins into food, defining a new category of consumer nutrition products focused on supporting immunity. We see a range of opportunities to use our breast milk proteins to enhance other types of functional foods for all segments of the population.

Helaina is backed by top VCs in the industry including Spark Capital, Siam Capital, Primary Venture Partners, and Plum Alley. We are a team of change-makers looking for our next team member who is intensely passionate about advancing synthetic biology for food and beverage products and redefining the future of nutrition.

About the Job:

We are looking for a Chief of Staff, Commercial.  This is a partner providing support to the Chief Operating Officer focused on designing and executing the strategy and the implementation of the systems to guide the day-to-day operations; supporting the COO on driving key commercial relationships forward; and building the commercial metrics and sales forecasts needed to effectively track and build a successful commercial function. 

What You’ll Do:

• Own the commercial CRM and manage it to produce accurate sales metrics, opportunity forecasts, and commercial reports to support commercial decisions.
• Project manage key commercial priorities across cross-functional areas of the organization.
• Serve as a proxy to the COO in reviewing commercial documents, account plans, client presentations and driving high-quality briefing documents. 
• Support the COO on commercial account management including driving the organization’s timely follow-up on customer and partner interactions, creating agendas, briefs, decks, pricing documents, and commercial materials for client meetings. 
• Build and maintain updated opportunity forecast and the revenue model in partnership with the finance department. 
• Support the COO on managing the weekly sales pipeline meetings, monthly sales management meeting, and weekly business meeting including, but not limited to, preparing presentations and reporting, providing insights to inform strategic conversations, and managing the necessary follow up.
• Project manage the sales and marketing team OKR process according to the OKR schedule.
• Help define, drive, and run internal C-level and relevant business reviews including commercial QBRs.
• Help define and monitor stage appropriate sales goals, metrics, sales quotas, bi-weekly KPI reporting for the sales and marketing team. 
• Work closely with internal teams on goal-setting and tracking, interfacing, and consulting with cross-functional groups to drive commercial goals to success. 
• Support the VP of strategy on key projects. 
• Act as a sounding board to the COO for new commercial ideas and initiatives.
• Help identify items that can be delegated to others to optimize the COOs time allocation to high-value activities.

About You:

• Experience in a commercial or sales enablement role is preferred. Extra points if the experience is within the ingredient industry. 
• Passion for doing whatever it takes to solve complex problems and build scalable processes.
• Proven success in analytics and reporting.
• Proven ability to quickly learn new things.
• Comfort working in a fast-paced, constantly changing environment.
• Ability to shift priorities quickly and act proactively, while maintaining organization and control.
• Exceptional listening abilities.
• Concise and persuasive written and verbal communication.
• Exceptional project management, negotiation and relationship-building skills.
• Proficient in sales forecasting and financial modeling.
• Proficiency on Hubspot or other sales CRMs is highly preferred. 
• Must be able to manage conversations with C-Suite with ease and confidence.
• Detail and results-oriented; driven and self-motivated. 
• Excellent organization and time management skills; ability to prioritize tasks across multiple projects.
• You are able to work effectively with a wide range of people 
• Passion for improving health and wellbeing of people across their life stages, from infants to adults

Benefits:

Helaina was founded on the belief that families should have freedom of choice.  We are committed to providing an inclusive workplace that does just that, supporting our team's health, wellbeing and professional development at every stage and milestone.  We are proud to offer comprehensive health care, generous parental leave and childcare reimbursement, equity packages and more.  A few highlights include:

• Full medical, vision and dental coverage
• Short and long term disability insurance coverage
• 401k match (up to 3%)
• Unlimited vacation days, including an all-company holiday between Christmas and New Year
• Paid Parental Leave for both parents + flexible return to work program
• Childcare reimbursement program
• Commuter Benefits
• Leadership Development coaching through BetterUp

Visit us at https://www.myhelaina.com/news to learn more about Helaina.

Helaina is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Helaina we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway.  You may just be the strongest candidate for this or other roles.  For more information, please contact careers@myhelaina.com.