Justin Ross Lee

Operations & Program Management  ·  San Francisco

Justin Ross Lee

Twenty years in San Francisco across crisis services, hospitality, and behavioral research. I build the operational infrastructure that lets teams do their best work — especially when the stakes are high.

About

I'm a program and operations manager with a background that spans crisis services leadership, hospitality management, and behavioral research. The thread across all of it: I build the systems, training, and infrastructure that let teams do their best work — especially when the stakes are high.

At Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, I lead a 24/7 crisis line program serving Alameda County, overseeing a team of roughly 100 staff and volunteers. My work spans hiring, scheduling, onboarding, coaching, organizational infrastructure, and identifying opportunities to improve how we operate. I lead with empathy and hold accountability in equal measure — because the people on our lines and the people calling them both deserve to be met where they are.

Before that, I spent years in San Francisco hospitality — running all operations at Gestalt Haus for five years, joining the opening team at Nommo, and serving as bar lead at Nari.

I hold a Psychology BA from UC Berkeley and served as physiological data lead on a behavioral research study at the Idiographic Dynamics Lab.

Outside work: I'm a marathon runner, always training for something. Running taught me that the hard part isn't the race — it's the discipline of building toward something incrementally, day after day. I came to San Francisco from Wisconsin twenty years ago on a complete whim and never left. I love learning about other cultures, customs, and traditions — the world is so much bigger than any one experience of it, and I find that endlessly energizing rather than overwhelming.

Skills
Program management Operations management Training & development Change management Process improvement Onboarding systems Team leadership Stakeholder engagement Quality assurance AI workflow design Google Sheets Notion Paylocity SQL (foundational) Python (foundational) Crisis intervention Trauma-informed care De-escalation