Melissa Cooper

About Melissa Cooper

I love helping founders get back to doing what they love by taking the least enjoyable but most essential work off their plate.Over the past decade, I’ve scaled startups from spreadsheets and Gmail to global enterprises. As the first employee at Globalization Partners (G-P), I built the company from inception to a $4.2B valuation and $300M ARR, growing our team to over across 100+ countries.Along the way, I led Operations, Customer Success, HR, Finance, Legal, and even stepped in as interim CRO, CTO, and CPO - whatever was needed to keep the company scaling.Today, I partner with founders and leadership teams who need structure, systems, and accountability to scale sustainably. I thrive in the messy middle bringing clarity, process, and calm to fast-growing environments. My sweet spot is creating operational rigor and financial infrastructure that lets founders focus on growth while avoiding the common pitfalls of scaling too fast.My North Star / Core Values: • Integrity – Always honor commitments, act with honesty and treat others with respect.• Excellence – Strive for meaningful impact and take pride in results.• Accountability – Own your actions, stay disciplined, and follow through.• Courage – Embrace challenges, take risks, and turn ideas into action.• Efficiency – Optimize processes with a focus on reducing waste. Specialties: Scaling operations | Customer experience | Global expansion | Fractional COO support | SaaS & EoR | HR, Finance, Payroll, Tax, Legal | Leadership development | Building teams that scale

Experience

1. Board Member

   G-P

   Jan 2024 — Present · US

   Employee #1 → helped scale G-P from a startup in spreadsheets to a $4.2B global company with $300M ARR and customers.• Designed and scaled the Global Operations & Account Management function from ground zero, growing from 10 to 200+ employees across 100+ countries.• Established standardized global service delivery processes, global knowledge-base, and a 24/7 shared services support model.• Consolidated Account Manager + Account Exec roles into a unified Customer Success organization, improving customer retention to 80% and reducing personel cost by 50%. • Implemented key technologies (Salesforce, Zendesk) and global governance frameworks.• Drove launch of G-P Standard, a self-service EOR model, enabling clients to hire international talent faster, more efficiently, and fully compliant across multiple jurisdictions• Led the launch of G-P Advisory, a new service line helping clients establish their own legal entities globally, providing an alternative to EOR while ensuring compliance and operational control• Stepped into interim executive roles (CRO, CTO, CPO) to maintain growth continuity.• Recognized internally as the “Chief of Getting Things Done.”

Education

• Fairfield University

  Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Accounting

  1996 — 2000