Meet the Makers: Elizabeth Pearson

Behind every screen is a team of people who care deeply about how it looks and works. Continuing our "Meet the Makers" series, we're sitting down this month with Elizabeth, ScreenCloud's Chief of Staff, to get a look at the strategy, focus, and people powering the company's next chapter.

Elizabeth Pearson

Chief of Staff • ScreenCloud

Q1: Chief of Staff roles sit right at the intersection of strategy and execution. Looking at ScreenCloud today, where do you see the biggest opportunity for the company over the next year?
Honestly, our biggest opportunity isn’t a single new thing, it’s focus. The companies that win get clear on the few bets that matter most and commit, rather than chasing everything at once. For us, those bets have a name: the five Value Creation Plans, our strategic priorities, that Cédric (our CEO) sets out at every All Hands. Getting genuinely sharp on those is the opportunity, but the thing I’d never want to get lost is that our people are the heart of delivering them. None of it happens on a slide; it happens because the team makes it happen. Keep people at the centre, stay focused, and the year ahead looks genuinely exciting - most of my job is simply helping us not get in our own way.

Q2: So much of your work is helping teams stay aligned as the business scales. How do you balance moving quickly with making sure people stay connected and focused?
For me, it comes down to messaging discipline. We have a north star and a clear plan to get there - our VCPs! See, I’m a broken record(!) and my job is keeping that story consistent as it travels. It starts with the exec team speaking the same language, then cascades to wider leadership, then to the whole company at All Hands, so by the time it reaches everyone it’s one message, not five versions of it. Get that right and people can move quickly without waiting to be told, because they understand the why. “Connected” isn’t about everyone being in every meeting; it’s everyone working from the same picture.

Q3: For someone joining ScreenCloud tomorrow, what’s one thing about the culture or way of working they’d only really discover after being here a while?
We’ve got a genuinely creative builder culture. People here want ScreenCloud to be bigger and better - they can see where the puck is going - and they keep finding clever ways to get us there. With a new product launching later this year, AI changing what’s possible, and the growth that comes with being PE-backed, there’s so much to build. What surprises people is that all that ambition sits right alongside genuinely great vibes. This is a team that pushes hard and has a serious amount of fun doing it. You don’t often get both, and I wouldn’t trade it.

Q4: Outside of work, what’s something you could happily talk about for hours with almost no preparation?
Planes. Anyone who’s met me for five minutes knows I used to work in corporate at British Airways — which mostly meant seeing the world from seat 1A, usually with a glass of bubbles in hand. These days I’m working towards my private pilot’s licence, flying a little Piper Warrior at weekends. There’s nothing better than driving to the airfield on a sunny Saturday, roof down and music up, then being in the air for a couple of hours. The physics behind flying blows my mind, the aviation community is the most wonderfully nerdy bunch you’ll ever meet, and travel gives you something nothing else can.

Q5: What’s a small thing that always makes your day better?
Watching someone do something they didn’t think they could - nailing their first big presentation after hours of prep, or cracking a problem they’d written off as too hard. Or a newly formed team starting to click and genuinely enjoy working together. That moment the penny drops and they realise they’re capable of more than they thought never gets old. I also coach and mentor outside work, often women early in their careers, and seeing them back themselves and go further than they thought they could is hard to beat.

Q6: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Languages, hands down. I’m floored by the people around the business who speak several - when someone can influence and persuade in a language that isn’t their mother tongue, I’m in awe. I can stumble my way through a bit of French and Spanish, and I even gave Mandarin a crack at university (ironically, I got better marks in that than in my far duller accounting modules). But to be effortlessly fluent in all of them? That’s the dream. I’m a change specialist, and communication sits at the heart of every change - so being able to truly connect with anyone, anywhere, in their own language would be a real superpower.