Helping startups take the nextleap.

Meet the Founder

Hi! I’m Kelly Jeanes. I've led People and Talent teams through fast, early-stage growth at Series A-C startups including Sage, Check, Candid Health, and Grailed. At Check, I joined as the first People hire and built the systems that took the team from 20 to 120+ in under a year. Earlier in my career, I learned what great looks like at scale at Squarespace and Palantir.

Now, as a fractional People and Talent leader, I give early-stage teams senior leadership on a part-time basis, before a full-time hire makes sense. Some founders want a strategic advisor to think through big decisions with. Others want an embedded operator who gets in the weeds and builds. Many need a bit of both!

I've partnered with companies backed by Thrive Capital, Index Ventures, IVP, Goldman Sachs, Stripe, Oak HC/FT, 8VC, SoftBank, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator.

I grew up in northern Virginia and I hold a BS in Psychology from George Mason University. I spent six years living in Brooklyn before relocating to Denver in 2020. Outside of work, I enjoy pilates, snowboarding, cooking, and taking care of my two free-roam pet rabbits.

Connect with me on LinkedIn!

Offerings

  • I provide part-time leadership for Seed to Series C startups. My role is fully embedded and may include:

    • Running key projects including engagement surveys, performance reviews, compensation philosophies or compensation bands.

    • Setting up Talent systems such as foundational SOPs, ATS implementation, creating structured interview plans, referral programs, or setting up jobs within the ATS.

    • Embedded recruiting, which could include finding and onboarding full-time People and Talent team members, running a G&A or EPD search, or partnering with exec search partners.

    • Providing strategic guidance to founders and leadership teams, helping to shape a long-term People and Talent strategy while navigating key growth phases.

  • A tailored solution for individual HR or Recruiting projects. Main offerings include:

    • Employee engagement & pulse surveys

    • Performance reviews

    • Compensation philosophy & salary bands

    • ATS implementation and recruiting process design

  • I offer strategic partnership through weekly meetings to discuss your People and Talent-related needs. This could encompass a wide range of topics, from helping you create a hiring plan for a People or Talent team member, assessing or interviewing candidates, reviewing your team roadmap and strategizing on growth, to navigating key development areas and addressing any other challenges you may face along the way.

Testimonals

  • "Kelly has been an invaluable partner to Candid over the past year. She's been essential in defining, refining and executing against our performance management systems, onboarding and offboarding processes, and broader tooling/process optimization. Kelly brings a sharp, results-oriented focus to her work while also being an approachable, trustworthy advisor for complex people issues. Kelly holds herself, and our team, to a high bar, and that commitment to excellence has helped us build a stronger people function."

    Doug Proctor, COO and Co-Founder at Candid Health

  • "Kelly joined as an Interim Head of People and she immediately jumped in and was able to quickly make an impact. She led our Head of People search, helped onboard our new HoP, and has been instrumental with recruiting and setting up foundational processes to help us double the team size this year. If you need a People or Talent leader who has a lot of experience with early stage startups, I highly recommend Kelly!"

    Matt Lynch, CTO and Co-Founder at Sage

  • “Kelly is a talented, experienced, and driven People & Talent leader. I had the privilege of managing her for 2.5 years after she joined Check as our first People hire. She thrives at bringing order to the chaos of the early stage startup environment. At Check that meant putting in place the systems and processes we needed to scale from 15 people up to 100+ in less than 18 months. She's relentless about improving at her craft, impeccably high-character, and extremely reliable. Any startup looking to grow would be fortunate to work with Kelly.”

    Andrew Brown, CEO at Check

Looking to scale your HR and talent functions?

Contact me today, and let's explore how I can help support your team.