Jocelyn Smith

Founder · Head of Operations · People Partner

Jocelyn Smith has spent over a decade doing the work most people don't see — building the infrastructure, processes, and people systems that let founders and leaders actually scale. She is the person you bring in when the business is growing faster than the foundation can hold, and you need someone who can figure it out, build it right, and make it run.

Her path hasn't been linear — and that's exactly what makes her effective. Jocelyn has pivoted, co-founded, rebuilt, and stepped into roles where there was no playbook and no margin for error. From co-founding a staffing platform and driving it to profitability in under six months, to stepping in as Fractional Head of Operations for a Series A-stage AI SaaS company and building their entire payroll, compliance, and vendor infrastructure from scratch — she has learned to operate with clarity and calm in the middle of chaos.

Across her career, Jocelyn has led HR and people operations, managed multistate compliance and payroll for distributed teams, built investor data rooms in partnership with legal and accounting teams, designed hiring and onboarding systems, and supported CEOs through some of the most complex seasons of their businesses. She brings the same level of ownership to a vendor invoice as she does to a funding round — because she knows that in a growing company, everything is connected.

Aether Studio is the practice she built to do this work intentionally — with a small number of founders at a time, at the level of trust and depth that actually moves the needle.