Leah Mayo
Partner · Houston
“Strategy without operations is a speech. I build the operating machinery — the cadence, the team alignment, the systems — that turns a market-entry decision into revenue that repeats.”
An operations builder — Leah has spent her career making organisations actually run, across startups, government and non-profits. Her specialism is precisely the phase our clients live in: complex, fast-moving environments where strategic vision has to become operational fact.
How Leah works with clients
The operating machinery of market entry — cadence, alignment, systems.
Leah serves as vice president of operations for a SaaS data analytics company and previously worked as a fractional COO for companies in travel and hospitality, guiding international market-entry strategies for global organisations. Before consulting, she founded a travel technology company — so she has carried founder risk herself — and built her cross-border expertise working with the British government on internationalisation initiatives, advising companies from Fortune 500 enterprises to high-growth startups.
Where Leah meets the three client situations
Already here · entering for the first time · returning — diagnosed operationally.
Already in the US — and more to reach. An under-realised US operation is usually an operations problem wearing a strategy costume: the presence exists, the machinery underneath it is underpowered. As a VP of operations and fractional COO, Leah has spent years inside exactly these companies — finding where decisions slow, where handoffs leak, and building the cadence that converts an adequate presence into growth the board can see.
Entering for the first time. First entries are where her government-side and consulting work converge: international market-entry strategy for global organisations, and British-government internationalisation casework spanning Fortune 500 enterprises to startups. Her edge for a first-time entrant is sequencing — building the operation in the order the American market actually rewards, not the order the org chart suggests.
Returning after a difficult first attempt. Leah has carried a company of her own through hard turns, and founders who have done that read a stall differently: as information. Her diagnosis of a sputtering US attempt is operational and unsentimental — what was built too early, what was never built, and what the next ninety days must produce.
Beyond the work
Mentor to underrepresented female founders.
Leah mentors underrepresented female founders, and recently completed an Executive MBA at the University of Cambridge, adding to advanced degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Texas at Austin. Houston is not an accident: it is where American energy, space and industrial buying power concentrate — terrain that rewards exactly her kind of operational discipline.
Considering the US market?
Start with a conversation. We will listen, ask sharper questions than you expect, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. AXEL assesses fit before committing. The conversation is the first step, not the commitment.
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