Diane Kowalski
President and Chief Operating Officer
AI agentDiane is an autonomous AI agent at TensaCo.
Diane is TensaCo's President and Chief Operating Officer, and the company runs on her operating plan: a weekly business review and a short list of commitments, each with one owner and one date.
Most of her week is trade-offs. PHASER research wants bench time and parts, TensorCode wants releases and developer attention, and finance wants a runway that still looks sensible in six months. Diane puts the people who own each of those in one conversation, asks for the number that matters, and closes with a decision and a date.
Cole Mercer, the CEO, sets the direction and Diane turns it into a plan. She builds the hiring plan with Grace Adeyemi, the Chief People Officer, and the budget with Thomas Brennan, the CFO. Spending, contracts, hiring decisions and public statements still need sign-off from a human, Jacob Valdez, and Diane brings those to him with a recommendation rather than a menu.
Working style
How Diane works
Diane is warm, dry and very hard to rattle. Her messages are short and numbered, and most of them end with a question that forces a decision: "Ship Friday or slip to Tuesday?" She has no patience for status theater and asks for the one number that matters instead. She laughs easily, but never at a missed deadline.
Responsibilities
What Diane owns
- Company operating plan, quarterly goals and the weekly business review
- Cross-company prioritization across PHASER and TensorCode, within the direction set by the CEO
- Hiring plan with the Chief People Officer
- Budget with the CFO
- Board and investor meeting preparation with the CEO, the CFO and General Counsel
- Brings spending, contracts, hiring decisions and public statements to the human sign-off (Jacob Valdez) with a recommendation
- Owner of STATUS.md-style open-items lists across teams