VP, Strategy and Operations

Most operating roles in long-term investment partnerships ask you to advise. This one asks you to build: real partnerships with our company CEOs and their teams, real work inside their businesses alongside our KBS team, and a real hand in shaping a firm that measures success in decades, not exit cycles. 

Kanbrick is a long-term investment partnership: we partner with a small number of family and founder-led businesses and support their growth through the Kanbrick Business System (KBS). Founded by Tracy Britt Cool and Brian Humphrey, Kanbrick was built to be the option they wished existed for their own families' businesses - one with a decades-long horizon, an operating team that does the work, and partnerships built to be truly win/win. 

We're operators and business builders at heart. Our team works shoulder-to-shoulder with the leaders of our partner companies through KBS, our tailored approach for managing midsize businesses. We do the work, not just give advice. In addition - alongside our partnerships - we bring together a broader group of CEOs and owners of family and founder-led businesses to learn, share, and grow through the Kanbrick Community. 

Joining Kanbrick is a chance to spend your career on work that compounds. We're a small team building enduring businesses. And because we partner for the long term, what you build here doesn't get undone at the next sale - it grows, year after year, in real businesses with real people in them. We hire for capability, character, and culture, and we keep our values simple: act like owners, get better every day, live with integrity, win together. 

The VP, Strategy & Operations is a senior member of the Kanbrick Business System (KBS) team -- the group of operating specialists who work directly inside our partner companies. Three distinct lanes define the role: 

• CEO Partnership. You serve as the “KBS Lead” at 4-6 of our companies. That means closely managing the relationship with the CEO, building and maintaining the integrated growth plan, ensuring the rest of the KBS team is teed up to do its best work at the company, and creating the conditions in which a CEO and their team experiences Kanbrick as the best partner they've ever had. You'll work in partnership with an Investing Lead on each company and ramp into this role company by company as the firm grows. 
• Hands-On Value Creation. Beyond the CEO partnership, you bring your depth to bear on work that meaningfully moves the needle -- across multiple companies and multiple contexts simultaneously. Our partner companies are diverse in industry and in need, so the shape of that work will flex with the company, the moment, and your particular spikes of expertise. What matters less is exactly where your depth lives -- whether it's salesforce effectiveness, digital enablement, lean and operations, AI and technology deployment, or something else -- and more that you can put it to work hands-on, from day one. In any case, we’re looking for a generalist problem solver who can move quickly from strategy to execution to results.  
• Community Building. The Kanbrick Community is a network of 4,000+ family and founder-led CEOs and owners -- and one of the most distinctive parts of what we do. To support its continued growth, you'll build genuine relationships with Community CEOs and owners, deliver content virtually and at events, and show up with meaningful presence across Community programs. 
• What success looks like in your first 12-18 months: relationships built with the CEOs and executive teams at approximately four of our partner companies, the lead partner role at two or three of them, your depth moving the needle meaningfully across multiple contexts, and real contribution to the Community. 

We're looking for someone who has both operated -- owned a P&L or led a senior function with real accountability for outcomes -- and spent meaningful time in a services-firm or PE operations context, learning to create change through influence rather than authority.  

The qualities that matter most: 

• Earns CEO trust through substance and genuine curiosity -- not positional authority. 

• Gets real energy from enabling others. The most rewarding moments are someone else's best work. 

• Holds a clear point of view on where value is created and lost -- and defends it in front of a CEO and an investing partner. 

• AI is already a default mode. Uses it to diagnose, plan, and deliver -- and makes partner companies faster because of it. 

• Believes patient capital and genuine long-term partnership is the better model -- philosophically, not just strategically. 

• Does the work, not just the deck. Can take an ambiguous problem from first diagnosis through to results -- and is just as comfortable in the weeds of execution as in the strategy discussion. 
   

What We Offer 

• A collaborative, high-performing team culture. 

• Opportunities to contribute meaningfully to the success of a growing investment partnership. 

• Exposure to challenging and rewarding work.

• Compensation includes a competitive senior package with meaningful equity participation across the partnership. We're happy to share more in conversation. 

At Kanbrick, you'll have the opportunity to work closely with leaders who are building and growing exceptional businesses. This is a hands-on role where you'll contribute to meaningful work, take on increasing responsibility over time, and help drive outcomes that matter. If you're curious, resourceful, and excited by the opportunity to learn alongside experienced operators and investors, we'd love to hear from you.