Consulting

Fractional Chief of Staff

Strategic Right Hand for Founders Building a Public Brand

Reading time: 6 minutes — or skim the headers if you’re short on time.

I work directly with founders building healthcare, advocacy, and mission-driven companies who know they need to show up publicly — and know they need help figuring out how. Some want to be the face of their brand but freeze when it’s time to press record. Others would rather not be on camera at all and need someone to find the right voice to stand in for them. Either way, the work is the same: build a public presence that’s strategic, sustainable, and unmistakably authentic.

Ilana Jacqueline - Fractional Chief of Staff

This is what working with me actually looks like.

@ilana_jacqueline

Sometimes we all just need little ✨push✨ #consulting #ceo #startups

♬ original sound – ilana_jacqueline

— a real founder, a real 11:47pm voice memo, and the part of the work nobody puts on an org chart.

The Two Founders I Work With

Most founders fall into one of two camps. Both need the same outcome — a credible, sustainable public presence that drives the business — but they need very different support to get there.

The Reluctant Founder

You’re a builder. A scientist. A clinical operator. A mission-driven CEO. You know your company needs visibility, but the idea of being the face of it makes you cringe before you’ve even started. You’ve tried being on LinkedIn and it felt forced. You’ve watched other founders post and thought I can’t do that — and I shouldn’t have to.

What you need: Someone who can architect your brand presence and source, vet, train, and manage the right creator voices to front it — influencers with unique POVs as patients, physicians, or community leaders — so your company has a public face without it having to be yours.

The Willing-But-Lost Founder

You’re game to be visible. Maybe you’re even comfortable writing a LinkedIn post once in a while — but other platforms terrify you, pressing record feels impossible, and every time you sit down to actually build a presence, you freeze. You don’t want to be trendy. You want to be meaningful. You want a body of public work you’ll be relieved to look back on ten years from now.

What you need: A strategic partner who helps you build thought leadership that actually lasts — coaching you into the version of your voice the world wants to hear, designing a content cadence that won’t burn you out, and serving as the first set of eyes on everything before you press post.

Either way, the work is the same: build a public brand that’s strategic, sustainable, and unmistakably authentic. Only the spokesperson changes.

I don’t teach founders how to fake confidence on camera. I help them find their confidence — and get excited to press record.

There’s no shortage of PR coaches who’ll hand you a script. No shortage of branding agencies who’ll build you a persona. Most of them produce founders who sound like every other founder. That’s not the work. The work is excavation — finding the way you actually talk about what you’re building, the metaphors you reach for, the stories you can’t help telling at dinner. Then building a public presence around that. Because audiences — especially patient and mission-driven audiences — can smell a script from a mile away. And once they smell it, they don’t come back.

Who I Work With

The founders I work with are usually building something that matters to a community that’s been overlooked, dismissed, or underserved by mainstream healthcare. Some patterns I see across my best clients:

  • Founders building for patient communities who’ve been told their pain isn’t real — autoimmune, chronic illness, rare disease, mold illness, ME/CFS, POTS, MCAS, Long COVID
  • Patient-founders whose origin story is the disease they’re solving for
  • Healthcare and mission-driven companies past initial product-market fit but pre-CMO — typically Seed through Series A, with revenue and a small team
  • Founders who care more about credibility than reach — they want a body of work they’ll be proud of in ten years, not viral hits today
  • Healthcare attorneys, advocacy nonprofits, and mission-driven service businesses who serve patient communities directly and need help building trust at scale

If that’s you — or someone you know — let’s talk.

How I Work

A comprehensive suite of strategic, creative, and community-led support — customized to where you are, what you’re building, and which path you’re on.

Strategy & Positioning

Architect social, content, and storytelling strategy from the ground up. Pressure-test product messaging, narrative frameworks, and platform strategy across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and podcasts.

Founder Coaching

For founders who want to be the face. One-on-one coaching to surface your authentic on-camera and on-page voice, content cadence design that won’t burn you out, and live feedback on videos, posts, and storytelling angles.

Spokesperson Sourcing & Management

For founders who don’t. Identify, vet, train, and onboard patient advocates, HCPs, caregivers, or mission-aligned creators to front the brand. Drawn from a vetted network of 150,000+ voices.

Trusted Brain

Product ideation, hiring input, creative direction, deck review, and the midnight texts when an idea won’t let you sleep — the strategic right hand most founders don’t realize they need until they have one.

Case Study: A Patient Founder Building for Her Community

The Situation:

A founder building a company for patients like her had a clear mission and zero appetite for fronting her brand alone. She knew that being the face of her brand across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube was important — but she also felt great concern for burnout and public scrutiny.

The Approach:

In our initial strategy session, we realized the best thing for the company wasn’t sacrificing her mental health for views, but instead securing the company’s true messaging and finding influencers who reflected her values, story, and challenges. We explored thought leadership opportunities that made her both excited and comfortable — while also developing marketing that leaned more heavily on the patients her products were created for.

The Result:

A founder who built a public presence on her own terms — without sacrificing her wellbeing or her message. A company with a credible, growing brand voice carried by a thoughtful mix of the founder’s own thought leadership and patient and provider creators reflecting the community the product serves. An engagement that has evolved from “social strategy” into a true strategic partnership across hiring, product, and long-term planning. Available as a live reference for serious inquiries.

More Than a Decade of Dedication to Healthcare & Advocacy

  • 15+ years in patient advocacy and healthcare marketing leadership
  • 170K+ engaged followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube
  • Cast patient influencers in campaigns for 150+ pharmaceutical brands, including Nurtec, Benlysta, Dupixent, Keytruda, and Cabenuva
  • 10M+ organic views on patient education content
  • Best-selling author with an exclusive audiobook deal with Audible
  • Featured by Dr. Phil, Cosmopolitan, Publisher’s Weekly, and CareTalk Podcast

I bridge authenticity and compliance — without sacrificing either. Through my work as a senior agency director within top influencer marketing firms, I have had the privilege of recruiting patient and HCP influencers for many major pharmaceutical campaigns, including:

Pharmaceutical brand logos

Engagement Tiers

Three monthly retainer tiers built as a ladder. Each tier includes everything in the tier below it. Pricing and full scope shared during our discovery call.

Lite

Strategic Thought Partner

For founders in early stages who need a strategic sounding board, not active execution support yet.

  • Weekly 1-hour strategy call
  • Async support via email/Slack
  • Light-touch feedback on decks, messaging, and early materials
  • Targeted introductions when aligned

Standard

Strategy + Build

For founders ready to actively build a public presence — either as the face or with a sourced spokesperson.

  • Everything in Lite, plus:
  • Active social and content strategy architecture
  • Founder coaching OR spokesperson sourcing path
  • Monthly content review and platform strategy
  • Real-time creative feedback

Full

Embedded Fractional Chief of Staff

For founders who need a true strategic right hand across brand, product, hiring, and growth.

  • Everything in Standard, plus:
  • ~18–20 hours/month of dedicated strategic support
  • Embedded role in product, hiring, and creative
  • Investor deck review and narrative support
  • Priority access — first call on the calendar

Project-based add-ons available at any tier — insight groups, full strategy builds, product QA reports, and content creation. Details shared on request.

How We Start

1

Discovery Call

30 min, no charge. We talk about where you are, what you’ve tried, and which path you’re on. By the end, we both know if this is a fit.

2

Proposal

Within 48 hours of the call, you receive a tailored proposal naming the tier and add-ons that fit your situation.

3

Onboarding

Once signed, we run a deep-dive onboarding session to align on voice, goals, and immediate priorities.

4

The Work Begins

Weekly cadence, async access, and a partner in the room from day one.

I take on a small number of long-term partners at a time. Availability is limited.

If you’re looking for an agency that takes on dozens of accounts, or a coach who’ll hand you a script and disappear — I’m not your person. If you’re looking for someone who’ll stay in the room while you build, let’s talk.

Let’s Build Something Founders Actually Trust

I work with established companies and early-stage founders alike — because the work of building a public brand with integrity isn’t reserved for companies with the biggest budgets. It’s reserved for the ones who care about getting it right.

📧 IlanaWrites@gmail.com 🌐 www.ilanajacqueline.com 💼 Or send a direct message on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilanajacqueline/


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