Chief of Staff | Strategic Operator
Building teams, trust & systems that scale.
Hey there — I’m Mark.
Chief of Staff at Firecrawl. Operator. Builder. Culture-first leader. I help fast-moving teams scale with clarity, trust, and systems that actually work.
Right now, I’m the Chief of Staff at Firecrawl - a fast-growing AI startup transforming how businesses extract and understand web-scale data. I sit at the intersection of people, operations, product, and strategy. My job is simple: make sure the company runs smoothly, grows intelligently, and that our founders and teams can move fast without chaos.
Over the years, I’ve built a strange-but-perfect mix of experience: education, retail, customer experience, HR/people ops, recruiting, internal systems, and startup operations. That range is precisely what makes me effective. I can jump into almost anything, fix what’s broken, build what’s missing, and help teams do their best work.
I’m at my best when I’m building something from scratch, scaling what already works, or creating order out of ambiguity. Whether it’s hiring systems, office buildouts, global compliance, communication frameworks, or culture design, I love bringing structure, humanity, and momentum to fast-growing companies.
And yes, I’m also a theme park diehard and roller coaster fanatic. There’s something about the way great parks orchestrate story, engineering, logistics, and human joy that has always inspired how I work. High stakes, high craft, lots of moving pieces; that’s my favorite place to be.
“Any organization will level-up almost instantly by having a person like Mark on their team.”
“Mark turns customer success into customer delight.”
“Mark is one of those difficult-to-find millennials who just gets it. Feeling as though you are walking in your customer’s shoes, comes naturally to Mark. I’ve watched him smooth over questionable situations with grace and expedition more times than I can count. With that said, Mark’s ability to lead and coach is what really makes him stand out.”
I started my career in retail, leading teams at Best Buy, West Elm, and Express. That chapter taught me how to manage large groups, build high-performing sales teams, redesign floor operations, coach people toward excellence, and improve performance metrics in real time. Retail is where I learned the rhythm of leadership under pressure: how to read a room, move a team, and create structure people can depend on.
From there, I spent 13 years in public education, where I built nationally recognized music and theater programs from scratch. This wasn't just teaching; it was full-scale operational leadership. I created systems for recruitment, culture, performance reviews, delegation, budgeting, fundraising, marketing, and execution. I led programs with over 650 student performers, worked with 250+ volunteers, and produced more than 50 major productions that earned awards for Best Set Design, Best Vocals, Best Tech Crew, Best Choreography, Best Band, Best Costuming, Best Show Concept, and multiple Grand Champion titles. I received national nominations for Most Up-and-Coming Director and Most Promising Program, earned the Yellow Rose Award for my work with students with special needs, received multiple grants, and was named Teacher of the Year. I also founded and ran Revolution Theatre Company, a for-profit theater company that produced community shows and a national festival drawing 35+ teams from over 10 states and more than 5,000 spectators. I built a nonprofit to support the programs I created and relentlessly fundraised to make sure every student had a place on the stage.
That chapter taught me how to rally communities, manage complex logistics, operate at scale with limited resources, and build a culture that people want to be part of. It sharpened my instincts for leadership, communication, and systems design, the same instincts I carry into every role today.
My move into tech began at Wefunder, a YC-backed startup helping everyday people invest in the companies they believe in. I joined as one of the earliest CX hires and eventually built and led the entire Customer Experience and Customer Success organization across both the US and Europe. I cut support volume by 57%, improved response times by over 100,000%, built investor playbooks used company-wide, led product and compliance launches, redesigned disbursement and onboarding systems to cut time-to-value by 50%, planned off-sites for 40+ people, improved online reputation by over 80%, and drove multiple product redesigns from idea to launch. When a project didn’t have an owner - HR systems, legal workflows, cultural initiatives, operational gaps - I stepped in and built the structure needed to solve it. That’s where I realized that my superpower is creating clarity inside ambiguity and building systems that let people do their best work.
Today, I’m the Chief of Staff at Firecrawl, where we’re building the platform that makes web data extraction effortless, reliable, and insanely fast. My job spans hiring systems, people ops, internal operations, global tax thresholds, legal and compliance coordination, office buildout, culture building in San Francisco, cross-functional product feedback, and strategic support for the founders. I help the company move faster, communicate better, and scale intentionally. When something needs to be built, clarified, or operationalized, it becomes my surface.
At my core, I’m someone who loves building teams, systems, and environments where people can shine, whether that’s a student stepping into the spotlight, a retail associate hitting their stride, an investor receiving white-glove support, or an AI startup scaling from a scrappy team to a global organization. I lead with heart, I build with precision, and I thrive in spaces where excellence has to be created, not inherited.
My Story. So far.
“Mark does not easily yield to challenges and obstacles. When he has a vision of how he can create an excellent experience, he summons the will, and he finds the way”
