Quick Start Guide:
Employee Engagement
for Restaurants

Laura is a talented people-leader who leads with compassion, humility and vulnerability to help companies grow and unlock their talent potential. She has a "builder mentality" and extensive experience with diverse workforces and complex organizations (including those with "retail workers"). As Tia's first senior people leader, Laura played a pivotal role in building and scaling Tia's people operations organization from Series A through Tia's Series B, through a period of immense growth, complexity and volatility in the macro environment. A devoted and mission-driven leader, Laura always puts her people and team first.

To be an effective HR leader in retail you need to have to understand the business, your Brand’s unique offering, and have strong generalist experience to create talent programs across the employee life cycle - I found these skills in Laura. Laura was a key business partner to me during my time at Aritzia. What I appreciated about the way that Laura approached the work is that not only could she think strategically and develop long range plans to support the growth of the business, but she was adept at acting locally, getting into stores, and getting to know our talent. During her time at Aritzia Laura built out the People + Culture infrastructure for the US and built out the internal mobility strategy to support the US in doubling its store count by developing talent in existing markets and deploying them to open new stores. If you’re a direct to consumer/eCommerce brand or an emerging retailer that needs to build out your talent strategy, or a legacy brand that needs to develop its Canadian or US entry strategy, partnering with Laura is a sound investment for your business.

Having previously worked with Laura, I knew she had a deep understanding of both the US and Canadian employment landscape and a proven track record of helping companies build the necessary people programs and policies to scale.. It was for this reason we engaged Laura to help FormulaFig understand the HR compliance needs for the opening of our first bar in the United States. Laura was able to educate us on California employment law in an efficient, relatable way and recommend and support the implementation of HR solutions that will save us time, resources, and money. We will continue to work with Laura in an interim capacity as we grow our business. I would not hesitate to recommend Laura and The PeoplePeople to Canadian companies expanding to the US, as an interim Head of People or growth organizations that need support to build their people and culture infrastructure.

Laura is one of the most influential leaders I’ve had the pleasure of working with. She is a strategic thinker, has ability to execute at scale and has had proven performance on beating any target or KPI. Laura has a natural ability to connect with teams and create a win/win culture that companies only dream of. She can lead with a vision with her direct reports and develops those around her including myself and the other senior executives in the team – she’s also developed a great pipeline within her team and the organization. Other wonderful qualities are that she is a genuine, brave and an inspiring leader that really cares about the organization and its team.

I have had the pleasure of working with and reporting directly to Laura during our time at H&M. Laura is a dynamic and caring Senior leader with incredible skills and knowledge in HR. Not only does she bring her technical knowledge and skill to her work, but also her heart and integrous leadership. She has a special gift for balancing professionalism with fun and deep personal connection, which drives a wonderful team culture to work in.