Who we are. 

Hi, I’m Laura!

I’m a people person. I’ve taken a heart-centered approach to my twenty year career as an HR executive. I love sharing energy, space and connection and asking thoughtful questions. I am the proud mom to a rescue pup, Holly Golightly. I love all things Canadian, arts and culture, and I am a proud Canadian in New York. A few fun facts about me:

  • I once had my face plastered across an H&M store in Times Square

  • … and there was this was one time where I was granted a medal… from the Queen!

  • I love americanos and ice cream.

  • I’m the Peloton rider who high fives everyone on the leaderboard.

  • One of my proudest achievements is raising over $75,000 for mental health research and for speaking bravely and boldly about my own mental health challenges.

Over the last two decades I’ve found my calling as a “people person” (read: HR leader) in both the public and private sector. I have worked for one of the government of Canada’s largest and most complex departments, Health Canada, and for innovative and exciting brands across retail and health technology at H&M, Aritzia and recently, Tia. Today, I’m the founder and principal consultant at The People People.

I have led teams from 9 to 80+ employees, across countries and continents.  Leading with deep care for people has guided me throughout my career in people and culture.  Focusing on caring for people - and enabling them to succeed both personally and professionally - has helped me to advance the organizations with which I have worked to be recognized on global ‘best workplace’ lists like The Great Place to Work Institute, The Business of Fashion and Forbes.  Learning about and applying best practices in employee development has contributed to my work globally:  I have worked with companies in Canada, the United States and Japan and have acted as a mentor to developing HR leaders in South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Canada. To learn more about my experience, see my greatest hits.

As a seasoned generalist people and culture leader, I support purpose driven organizations to build winning people and culture teams and develop effective people-centered programs and processes throughout the employee life cycle.  I want to leverage this deep understanding of and care for people, my global perspective, and my 18 years of experience in people and culture to support YOU in building or transforming your people strategy.

Learn more here about how The People People can help you.

With my rescue pup, Holly.

If I were to create a "highlight reel" of my proudest professional achievements it would include:

  • Developing winning people teams: I have had the distinct opportunity to lead and develop HR professionals who have growth their careers and have seized leadership positions in leading retail fashion brands, non for profit, and fintech.

  • Leading employee engagement, employer branding and learning and development programs which have been recognized by Great Place to Work; Retail Council of Canada; Forbes; and Business of Fashion.

  • Leading the development of a North American Diversity and Inclusion strategy, including leading the search and selection committed for North America’s first DEI-focused leader;

  • Raising awareness of careers in retail by launching a national recruitment campaign called “Place of Possible” featuring H&M's own employees;

  • Championing the use of data and analytics to improve employee retention and engagement, reduce time to fill and increase candidate quality;

  • Championing an employee-centric employee relations and labor relations strategy, including the creation of an employee relations Centre of Expertise,

Greatest Hits

  • Acting as a member of CivicAction Youth Escalator Program's Champion's Council and building a bias free selection process to connect youth with careers in retail

  • Building the people team and infrastructure for a hypergrowth start up helping the Company to grow by over 383% in less than one year. In this role I quickly learned how to build HR programs and processes to support a high complex entity structure with one Management Services Organization and several Professional Corporations.

  • Speaking at various HR conferences and roundtables to support the growth and development of seasoned and emerging HR professionals. These include: Talent Connect; Retail Council of Canada’s Retail HR Conference, Great Place to Work’s Global Conference, HR University, Symphony Talent’s Virtual Symposium; NYU’s Wagner School of Public Policy; Bennie’s HR Leaders Roundtable and a recent case study interview with Indeed.

  • Laura Hammond, Ben James, Melissa Kruyne - Fundraising for the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Foundation.

  • Speaking at the 2017 Global Great Place to Work Institute with Jessica Gabriel, Employee Experience Manager, H&M Canada and Ron Grey, Senior Vice President, Great Place to Work Canada.

  • Aritzia's New York Retail Team celebrates international women's day with storytelling, IWD trivia and celebrating Aritzia's impact on women and girls: Aritzia has donated over $16 million to organizations and causes that support the advancement of women and girls. These donations have impacted over 155,000 women and girls.

  • Me with the H&M Japan Function Head team. I supported Japan as a fractional Country Human Resources Manager in 2016 to support the 2017 goals process; building an org design for the Human Resource function and in developing and selecting the new Country Human Resources Manager.

  • The first class of H&M x CivicAction Toronto's Youth Employment Partnership. I spearheaded the development of a bias free selection process that assessed soft skills as well as job specific requirements such as working cash and greeting customers for fitting room changes. The program has been used as a Case Study to support other employers in developing skills based assessments to reduce bias in the hiring process.