When you learn new things, you can become a different person.
When I learned how to podcast in 2018, I moved through the world differently. I developed a new set of hard skills and a new set of soft skills.
The hard skills eventually allowed me to coach people about podcasting and produce podcasts for companies and people. Having podcast production skills helped me get a Chief of Staff-like role before.
I also developed soft skills like more confidence and the confidence to reach out to people to chat on my (other) podcast.
After having 500+ podcast conversations, I can now see, hear, and feel my learning and development. It’s really cool. I can imagine you have developed a lot of hard and soft skills over the years too!
Reply back and share an example with me!
Mariko Kunitomo thinks a lot about helping people develop hard and soft skills.
She is the Global Chief of Staff, Talent & People at WPP Media. A lot of her role is around employee learning and development, which in turn can make the employees more valuable.
And if the employees are more skilled and valuable, this can be helpful for WPP Media’s business, which is then a good thing for Mariko and her department.
I thought this was a fascinating way to think about creating impact and ROI as a Chief of Staff. And I hope you enjoy this episode with Mariko too!
🎧 A Chief of Staff with David Nebinski
Here are the time-stamp notes from the episode:
01:00: On becoming a mother and how she now thinks about identity and work ambition
03:00: 11-year journey from recruiting to Global Chief of Staff, People & Talent at WPP Media
04:30: What it means to be a functional Chief of Staff in a huge organization
07:30: How the Chief of Staff role is growing inside WPP
08:30: Upskilling employees can be a direct growth lever for a business, particularly in an AI-world
13:30: Measuring the ROI of people development
17:45: People and employees being a differentiator at companies in an AI-first world
19:30: The importance of understanding the business as a CoS
28:00: Having the perfect fit CoS–principal relationship with Jasmine Bahen
30:45: Change management at scale: more than a comms plan
As a reminder, A Chief of Staff with David Nebinski is available to listen here, here, here, here, etc!
💼 Open NYC CoS and CoS-Like Roles
Chief of Staff at Natter
Chief of Staff at Holly
Strategy and BizOps Manager at Duolingo
Founders Associate at Prior Labs
Chief of Staff at a home services tech company
Chief of Staff at Justfix
Chief of Staff / Strategic Lead Technical Program Manager at JP Morgan Chase
🎉 Next A Chief of Staff Mixer on 9/24
Save the date!
The next A Chief of Staff Mixer will be on Thursday September 24th in New York.
That’s all I got for now!
Thanks again to Mariko for this A Chief of Staff podcast chat!
-David Nebinski who wants you to know that I moved a few videos over to the A Chief of Staff with David Nebinski YouTube channel if you want to subscribe!
PS: speaking of upskilling, what has been the best thing you have done in 2026?
