About

I'm Laura Johnston — Executive Business Partner, writer, & the person behind this platform.

Thirteen years. That's how long I've spent working at the highest levels of organisations that don't slow down for anyone. An AI scale-up navigating Series B and C funding rounds. An ultra-premium global hospitality group. And most recently, Global Individual Health at Cigna Healthcare — a C-suite operating at pace across multiple markets. The environments have been different. The work has been the same: make leadership possible.

Not (just) manage the diary. Not (just) book the travel. Hold the thread when everything is moving at once. Anticipate the decision before it's made. Create the conditions for good work to happen — and make it look unremarkable. That is what exceptional executive operations actually looks like. And it is, curiously, one of the hardest things to explain — including to the executives who have relied on it most.

This platform started in 2020. I had recently moved to Dubai, and I needed somewhere to put what I knew. Behind me was one significant role: Tractable, a London AI scale-up where I'd managed operations across three regions and been in the room for two major funding rounds. I had a point of view on the EA role — on what it was really asking of people, and what it could be when done with rigour. Writing gave me a way to articulate it.

What I didn't anticipate was what the platform would give back. Writing publicly about the craft of executive operations turned out to be its own form of credibility. The platform shaped how I was perceived professionally, opened doors I might not have found otherwise, and played a quiet but consequential role in what followed — the senior roles, the more complex organisations, the work that demanded more.

The platform is now evolving. To reflect where I am, and where I'm headed.

I write about what it actually means to operate at the top — the craft, the complexity, and the career questions that don't have clean answers. It's for senior EAs, Executive Business Partners, and Chiefs of Staff who are already thinking beyond the job description. And it's for the executives and organisations who want to understand what they genuinely have when they have someone exceptional beside them.

Because the best EAs aren't simply supporting leadership. They're enabling it. And that distinction matters more than most organisations have yet realised.

If that resonates — you're in the right place.