Kelly Esten holds two of the top jobs at Toast at the same time. She is both the chief marketing officer and the chief operating officer at the restaurant technology company. That means she oversees marketing and the company's day-to-day operations in one combined remit.
Her path to this point was not sudden. She has spent over nine years at Toast, where she ran product launches, led partnerships, and helped grow the company's business with ever-larger restaurant groups. The marketing chief title came first, and the COO role followed.
How Kelly Esten Manages Two C-Suite Jobs at Toast
The way Esten makes two roles fit together is simple to describe but hard to practice. She gives things away. Over time, she has regularly decided which parts of her old jobs should no longer be hers, and which tasks to hand off to others.
She sums up the mindset in one line:
"I get to supervise, but I don't get to do the work anymore." — Kelly Esten
That shift is not just about saving time. Holding two C-suite titles pushes her to think about Toast as a whole, rather than as separate functions. Marketing and operations stop being two different worlds and become one job of running the business.
Why Letting Go Defines Her Leadership Style
Esten's willingness to offload work is described as a habit that helps define her leadership style. Instead of clinging to tasks she used to own, she steps back and lets others carry them.
For a company like Toast, which handles digital ordering and payments for restaurants, that matters. The business spans technology, payments, and relationships with restaurant groups of growing size. No single executive can personally run all of it.
The approach also explains how she has stayed useful across nine years of change at the company. Each new responsibility meant shedding part of the old one. The job title grew, but the list of things she personally does shrank.
Our Take: The Real Lesson in Esten's Two Titles
To put it plainly, the interesting part of this story is not that one person holds two titles. Plenty of executives collect extra responsibilities. The interesting part is what Esten says she gave up to make it work.
In our view, her line about supervising but not doing the work is the whole story. Most managers who take on more say yes to new duties and quietly keep the old ones too. That is how people burn out and how teams stop growing. Esten's habit of deciding what is no longer hers is the opposite of that.
For readers, the takeaway is practical. If you are handed a bigger role, the first question is not "how do I do more?" It is "what am I going to stop doing?" Esten's example at Toast shows that giving work away is not losing control. It is how you keep it.
