Operant Partners Est. 2026 Get in touch

Operational leadership · McKinney, TX & remote

Operational leadership for what comes next.

Operant Partners is the advisory practice of Erik Woodward — an operator-COO who helps PE-backed and founder-led growth companies operate with more rigor and less friction. Available for fractional COO work, board seats, and executive coaching.

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OP
Operant Partners
Operational Leadership

The best operational leadership tends to be quiet — rigor where it's missing, momentum where it's stalled, and a team that runs well without me in the room.

Erik Woodward · Principal, Operant Partners

What I do

A few ways to put an operator in the room.

Most engagements begin with a simple question: what has to be true operationally for this company to reach its next milestone — a raise, an exit, a turnaround, or the shift from founder-run to professionally-run?

01

Fractional & Interim COO

Hands-on operational leadership for growth-stage companies that want a seasoned operator without a full-time hire.

  • EBITDA & gross-margin improvement
  • Capital-project & field-deployment delivery
  • ERP, systems & KPI infrastructure
  • PE readiness, fundraise & exit prep
  • Founder-run → professionally-run transitions
02

Board Director

An operator's perspective in the boardroom — testing plans against what it takes to execute them, not just approve them.

  • Independent or advisory board seats
  • Operational & capital-allocation oversight
  • PE / portfolio-company governance
  • Energy, industrial & climate-tech sectors
03

Executive Coaching

Quiet, one-on-one counsel for founders, first-time COOs, and rising operators — from someone who has carried the P&L.

  • New-COO & operator onboarding
  • Scaling leadership & org design
  • Decision-making under pressure
  • Building steady, KPI-driven teams

Experience

Two decades in complex, capital-intensive operations.

A career spent scaling safety-critical, asset-heavy operations — from a $1B Chevron asset to a venture-backed energy-tech company through its exit.

Streamline Innovations — COO, 2020–2025

Led the operational scale-up of an H₂S gas-treating / RNG energy-tech company through a nine-figure exit, growing gross profit 5× and doubling EBITDA three years running.

Scaling with discipline

Grew field deployments from 10 to 70+ and built the organization to 75+, delivering a $100MM+ P&L within roughly 1% of capital forecast.

Operations run on data

Built real-time KPI and analytics infrastructure supporting 99.9% fleet uptime, a 25% chemical reduction, and 15% supplier savings, alongside a full ERP implementation.

ColdStream Energy — COO

Helped secure private-equity funding and build the operational foundation for growth.

Chevron — large-asset leadership

Ran the Rangely CO₂ flood ($100MM+ P&L on a $1B asset), delivered a $10MM AI / digital-transformation control room, directed a $7B business plan, and led international operations in Brazil.

Engineer-operator foundation

A chemical engineer by training, with Lean Six Sigma discipline and FEMA incident-response experience — rigor that carries from the plant floor to the boardroom.

Where I've operated
Streamline Innovations ColdStream Energy Chevron
Erik Woodward

About

Erik Woodward is an operator-COO who has spent his career scaling PE-backed, high-growth companies in energy, industrial, and climate-tech.

He built his foundation at Chevron running large, capital-intensive assets, then moved into the growth-stage world as COO of ColdStream Energy and Streamline Innovations, where he led the operational scale-up that carried the company to a nine-figure exit. His edge is a combination rarely found in one person: the engineering rigor to fix operations at the root, and the executive judgment to build teams, systems, and P&L discipline that outlast his tenure.

Through Operant Partners, Erik works with a small number of growth companies at a time — as a fractional COO, a board director, or a quiet sounding board for the leaders doing the scaling themselves.

Education
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M
Method
Lean Six Sigma · FEMA incident response
Based in
McKinney, TX · Available nationally (remote)
Sectors
Energy · Industrial · Climate-tech · Field services

Get in touch

No pitch — just a conversation.

If you're thinking about a raise, an exit, or the shift to a professionally-run operation, I'm happy to talk things through, whether or not it leads anywhere. A note or a short call is the easiest place to start.

Email ewpost9@gmail.com
Schedule A 30-minute call, if it's useful →
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/eawoodward