Kristen Ostro forged a robust foundation for her entrepreneurial success through a distinguished career as an executive assistant before launching her firm, Strut Consulting, in 2016, where she now serves as CEO. She got her first big career break when she was hired as EA to the CFO of Tower Records. From there, she took on executive assistant roles at the international law firm Baker McKenzie, a San Francisco-based broker-dealer, and then spent five years in various administrative, events, and marketing roles at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the largest venture capital firms in the world. In the years before starting Strut, she served as the Director of Operations for top-tier emerging VC funds, including Homebrew, Xfund, and Zetta, where she leveraged her executive assistant skillset to instill best-in-class operations at each firm.
Kristen also started Let’s Talk Ops (LTO), a 501(c)6 non-profit nationwide community of 200+ operators powering some of the world’s most successful venture capital firms from behind the scenes, and serves as the organization’s Managing Director. Originally hailing from Sonoma, California, she played Division One Women’s Volleyball for Towson University, where she earned two torn ACLs and a B.S. in Business Administration.