Emma Giles
Emma is a founder and executive coach who has raised $20M+, operated through 2021’s hyper-expansion, 2022’s contraction, and today’s AI disruption, and coached teams through multiple high-stakes pivots.
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As a previous COO, raised over
$20mm
Coaches companies from
Seed to Series B+
Built companies from
0 to 1, 1 to n
As a coach
Emma has lived the founder journey: rapid growth, premature scaling, difficult unwinds, hirings, firings, hard conversations with boards and investors, and lawsuit threats. She has operated inside moments where decisions carried real consequences, and where getting it wrong could kill the company.
Throughout these phases, Emma was the co-founder and COO of SoWork, a Boston-based venture-backed company founded at Harvard. In the executive room, she was the CEO’s coach. Inside the business, she drove strategy, managed teams, and executed under pressure.
Emma has spent years coaching CEOs and senior leaders through these moments. She’s helped them navigate fear, regain clarity, and move into decisive action while the pressure was high and the stakes were real.
She has built companies both ‘zero to one’, and ‘one to n’, and has operated through dramatically different market regimes, including the 2021 capital surge and the sudden reversal in 2022, when board pressure shifted overnight from a hiring spree to slashing burn. More recently, she has been building and leading through the current AI disruption, facing firsthand the questions CEOs are now wrestling with around product relevance, distribution shifts, AI workers, and the accelerating pace of change.
Before the multiple startups and pivots, Emma was trained in psychology and computational neuroscience at Harvard/MIT, built large-scale data products for the World Health Organization, and worked as the youngest-ever crisis counselor on a suicide hotline. This foundation, combined with the disorder, pressure, and whiplash of startups shaped her ability to enter high-stakes situations calmly, hold fear without flinching, and guide people toward clear decisions under pressure.
Emma lives and trail runs in Vancouver, Canada.
Emma’s clients include founders from venture-backed companies like...
How Emma coaches...
Emma coaches CEOs and executives operating under real pressure -- when decisions are ambiguous, the stakes are high, and there’s no clear signal telling them what the right move is.
She understands how complex it is to run a scaling company: making irreversible decisions with incomplete information, carrying fears that can’t be shared broadly, and navigating moments where founder intuition itself feels compromised.
CEOs feel like she is sitting right beside them, fully understanding the pressure they’re under, while helping them move from uncertainty and fear into clarity and concrete next steps.
Emma's coaching is defined by:
• Facing fear. Emma goes directly to the decisions leaders are avoiding because the consequences feel too large to confront. She holds those moments steadily, cuts through noise, and helps leaders take decisive action when it matters most.
• Clarity under pressure. Emma does not allow conversations to drift. She brings structure to chaotic, high-stakes situations by collapsing competing priorities into a short list of what actually matters. Leaders leave with focus and forward motion.
Testimonials
"Emma is the only CEO coach I’ve ever fully trusted, and that trust has been earned repeatedly. I can bring her any problem I’m losing sleep over, even ones I’ve been stuck on for months. Within about ten minutes (literally), she helps me find clear next steps and calms my nerves. That combination of speed, clarity, and steadiness has happened at least 50 times in the past year, and I’ve never felt more confident as a CEO than when I’m working with her."
Vishal Punwani
CEO
"I was initially brought in to coach Emma. It became clear immediately that she should be coaching me. Emma is rare. Deeply empathetic, brutally clear, and exceptionally fast at turning chaos into forward motion. Conversations with her don’t just unlock today’s problem - they build the mental frameworks you’ll keep using long after. Her velocity is unmatched, her impact compounds quickly, and she doesn’t believe in ceilings - hers or yours."
Howard Kaplan
Strategic Advisor
"Emma is an incredibly perceptive human being who takes the time to hear you out, empathize, and then provide the much-needed guidance and advice to get you unstuck. She gets CEOs, coming from a very strong entrepreneurial background herself that exposed her to the biggest things that keep me up at night. Any founder would be incredibly lucky to work directly with her."
Bryan Gold
CEO
"Emma understood me immediately. She managed to guide my thoughts with an approach that was the right balance between thoughtfulness and candor. We got to the root of my messy problems right away, allowing me to find actionable solutions to problems that were weighing on me for months. Wonderful coach."
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Pedro Sant'Anna
COO
"Emma is the coach for founders who can’t find executive coaches that can keep up with them - Emma can, and will. She’s one of those rare founders who is both operationally exceptional and genuinely approachable. She’s an incredible listener, with a way of making people feel like she’s their wisest confidant. She has a razor-sharp mind, and gets beneath leaders’ protective layers, surfacing what’s really holding them back. Anyone is lucky to have an hour of Emma’s attention, and they’ll leave feeling clear, unburdened, and ready to tackle the hardest issues."
Ayse Baybars
Co-founding Partner
FAQs for Potential coaching clients
What is the Mochary Method?
Matt Mochary, Silicon Valley's most sought-after CEO coach, created the Mochary Method in the early 2010s. The Mochary Method blends tactical, no-nonsense advice with human connection and mindfulness, resulting in a cheat code for leaders on how to run their companies effectively and efficiently.
Who are some of the coachees of the Mochary Method?
Who are some of the coachees of the Mochary Method? This list is long, but some of the names past and present include:
- CEOs
- Brian Armstrong at Coinbase
- Brad Hoover at Grammarly
- Zach Perret at Plaid
- Henrique and Pedro at Brex
- Alexandr Wang at Scale
- Steve Huffman at Reddit
- Brian Long at Attentive Mobile
- Alex Blania at Worldcoin
- Chris Mansi at Viz
- Virgilio Bento at Sword Health
- Francis Davidson at Sonder
- Jay Kreps at Confluent
- Max Rhodes at Faire
- Vlad Tenev at Robinhood
- Eric Wu at Opendoor
- Sebastian Lehmann at Postmates
- Ryan Petersen at Flexport
- Investors
- Alfred Lin and Pat Grady at Sequoia
- Peter Fenton at Benchmark
- Hemant Taneja at General Catalyst
- Anu Hariharan and Ali Rowghani at Y Combinator Continuity
- Lachy Groom at Lachy Groom Fund
- Mamoon Hamid at Kleiner Perkins
- CJ Reim at Amity Ventures
Why do I need a coach?
Many people report to you. And, theoretically, they perform better because of it.
But you report to no one. Yes, you report to the board, but not really. You don't share everything with them; they are not your true thought partners.
When we work together, you will report to your coach. If, after three meetings, your life is better, then you will know that the Mochary methodology works. It is all captured in the Mochary Method Curriculum, so feel free to use it with your team. Those who have read these docs tell us we should make them required reading before coaching anyone. For now, though, that's still only a suggestion.
What is the fee?
For Matt Mochary and Alexis:
- $12,500 monthly
For Faith, Georgia, Emma, Alyson, Adam, Bek, Rico, and Matt Given…
- $10,000 monthly.
- Your action is to cause your Legal and Finance team to make the first payment. After that, our finance team can interact independently with your finance team.
What is included in the fee?
With Mochary Method coaches, you get two (2) to four (4) coaching sessions each month. Matt, on average, you get one (1) coaching session each month.
You can contact your coach anytime via email, Slack, or text.
Finally, we coach you through our Mochary Method proprietary software. You'll have the option of implementing the software into your entire organization once it's available.
What do you teach?
Almost everything we teach is in the Mochary Method Curriculum, so feel free to use it with your team. It is open-source.
Who are the Mochary Method coaches? Does Matt recommend them?
The Mochary Method coaches are experienced professional coaches with diverse operator and entrepreneurial backgrounds and over 10,000 hours of combined coaching experience.
Here are their bios:
- Alexis d’Amecourt
- Georgia Dienst
- Faith Meyer
- Matt Given
- Adam Donkin
- Alyson DeNardo
- Bek Akhmedov
- Rico Trevisan
- Emma Giles
In a nutshell, yes, they are as good as Matt. Matt thinks they are even better than he is.
What makes the MM coaching experience different from anything else out there?
There are lots of resources available to you as CEO. There are ...
- Investors who can share with you information and introductions from within their network
- Advisors who have specialized knowledge about a subject area (i.e., marketing, sales) or running a company (x-CEO or x-COO) and can give you tactical solutions that have worked for them in the past
- Coaches who can ask questions to identify your biggest obstacles and hold you accountable for what you say you will do to solve them.
- Therapists who can make you feel deeply heard and, therefore, know that you are neither alone nor crazy
All of these resources are excellent. And we recommend them all. We are something different ...
- If you are your company's CEO or executive team member and are frustrated that you don't know how to manage your team effectively or teach your peers and reports how to be effective managers, then …
- We show you, your peers, and your reports how to be phenomenal managers!
- A Mochary Method coach becomes your manager using our system and software. You will likely feel more empowered, engaged, and effective within three meetings. If so, then you know the system works.
- We then help you implement that same system and software throughout your company. We then celebrate with you as your team becomes more empowered, engaged, and effective.
- Please call us when you need help managing your company or your department. We will show you how.
What is the ideal persona for coaching under the Mochary Method?
You are our ideal client if …
- You are the head of your organization (CEO) or department (exec team member)
- Your company:
- Is a top performer in its class (seed, series A, B, C, public)
- Has proof points of being a top performer, including:
- Top-tier investors, or
- Bootstrapped but cash-flow positive and growing quickly
How often do we meet?
Once we've had an initial 1-1 meeting, if we create value, we will continue meeting twice a month on average for sessions (Alexis, Aly, Bek, Faith, Adam, Matt Given, and Georgia) or once a month for a call (Matt).
If you have one, we will include your Chief of Staff (as an observer). If you don't have one and are at Series A or beyond, we strongly encourage you to get one.