ABOUT COGITO CXO

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Who I Am

I’m Jeni Chen, a fractional CXO and systems architect with more than 15 years of experience operating inside growing organizations across manufacturing, multi-unit hospitality, retail, and high-growth environments.

I focus on redesigning how work gets done so businesses can grow without relying on heroics. That work centers on strengthening systems, clarifying ownership, and reducing the friction that quietly drains teams.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked inside organizations as they navigated complexity, fragmentation, and growth. I’ve been responsible for building the systems that allowed the business to keep operating while it changed, often under real constraints of time, capital, and people. That experience shapes how I work today. I build structure that holds up in practice while staying mindful of how those systems affect the people inside them.

Most recently, I spent several years as Second-in-Command and Director of Operations for a growing automotive aftermarket suspension manufacturer (SuperSprings International). In that role, I was responsible for modernizing core operating systems while the business continued to run. The scope was enterprise-wide and required close coordination across technical, operational, commercial, and support functions.

Prior to that, I served as Vice President within a multi-entity business group spanning hospitality, retail, and real estate (the Montesano Group). I supported operations and financial controls across hundreds of employees in a highly dynamic, multi-unit environment. That experience sharpened my ability to design systems that scale without becoming brittle.

Across earlier roles in multi-unit operations, retail, and wholesale, I developed a broad, cross-functional understanding of how accounting, inventory, systems, and people processes intersect in real operating environments.

Who this work is for

Cogito CXO works best with organizations that know their current way of operating isn’t sustainable.

That might look like a growing company starting to feel the strain. It might also look like a smaller or founder-led business that’s behind, overwhelmed, or stuck in catch-up mode and needs help stabilizing before anything better can be built. Catch-up and stabilization work is often part of the process.

In both cases, the work starts by creating clarity and breathing room. The difference is what comes next.

This work is a good fit for leaders who want to move beyond perpetual triage and are willing to invest in building foundations once the immediate pressure is addressed.

It’s probably not a fit if you’re looking for someone to temporarily absorb chaos without changing the system that created it, or if you want surface-level efficiency tweaks without addressing deeper structural issues.

A few questions I’m commonly asked

What does Cogito mean?
Cogito comes from the Latin verb cogitare: to think, to consider, to reason deliberately.

Most operating problems are not caused by a lack of effort or ambition. They come from unclear decisions, misaligned priorities, or structure that has not kept up with the business. Cogito reflects how I work by shaping decisions intentionally so the business builds momentum that compounds rather than unravels.

What does CXO mean?
CXO is shorthand for “Chief ___ Officer,” such as CEO, COO, or CFO. These are the roles where decisions shape how the business actually runs.

In my work, CXO means operating at that level without being a full-time internal executive. I work alongside founders and leadership teams on the decisions, systems, and tradeoffs that typically sit at the C-suite, particularly when the business is changing faster than its structure.

Why CXO instead of COO?

COO is a specific executive role, typically centered on owning operational execution.

My background has been more cross-functional. I’ve worked at the enterprise level across operations, finance, people systems, technology, and leadership, often in situations where the structure itself needed to be designed or strengthened. CXO better reflects that scope and the nature of the work I do. It allows me to help leaders align systems, decisions, and accountability across the organization without forcing the work into a single functional box.