Phil Gray

Hiring the right people, building efficient teams, and keeping operations from falling apart at the same time is genuinely hard. I’ve spent over a decade doing exactly that across biotech, logistics, healthcare, and SaaS, which means I’ve made most of the mistakes so you don’t have to.

I’m the COO of Black & White Zebra and an Editor at People Managing People, where I focus on ops leadership and AI transformation, but I am also a business renaissance man with my hands in many departmental pies, My goal is to give HR and people ops leaders practical, no-nonsense guidance they can actually use. I am an advocate of centralized data management, holistic planning, and process automation.

I previously served as VP of Operations at Thinkific. Before that, at Procurify, I held dual roles leading both Marketing and Operations & Finance for over three years, giving me a rare cross-functional view of how people, process, and budget decisions interact at the organizational level.

I hold an MBA from the University of British Columbia with a focus on Product and Services Management, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Victoria.