Selected Engagements

Every engagement at Rösalu Studio is custom. The work below represents the kind of People and Culture infrastructure I've built in past senior roles — anonymized to respect prior employer relationships, but every number and outcome is real. If your company is sitting in the same neighborhood as any of these stories, we should talk.

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  • A 0→150 People Operations build at a now-public marketplace company.

    THE SITUATION

    A now-public marketplace company in its early days hired me as their first HR employee. The company had ~20 corporate employees and ~50 independent contractors at the time. There was no HRIS, no compliance framework, no benefits architecture, no onboarding program, no people-data infrastructure — none of the scaffolding that holds a fast-growing company together. The company was scaling across multiple states with the founders still operating as the de facto HR function.

    THE CHALLENGE

    When a founder is also the de facto HR lead, every people decision becomes a bottleneck. Hiring slows. Compliance gaps multiply. Onboarding becomes inconsistent. Comp decisions get made on instinct. Founder time gets pulled away from product, growth, and capital raising. The company needed someone to build the entire People function — fast, without breaking what was already working, and designed to scale with a business that was about to grow 10x.

    WHAT I BUILT

    • Designed and implemented the company's first HRIS, replacing manual processes and spreadsheets

    • Built compliance coverage across all 50 states for both W-2 corporate employees and 1,000+ 1099 contractors

    • Created a self-serve onboarding strategy that worked at the scale of independent-contractor sign-ups

    • Established Benefits, Learning & Development, DEIB, and HRIS sub-teams as the company scaled

    • Partnered with leadership on workforce planning across new business verticals as the company expanded into adjacent product lines

    • Scaled the People function from a single hire to a multi-team organization supporting 150+ corporate employees

    OUTCOMES

    • Onboarding time reduced by 85%

    • Turnover improved by 45%

    • Compliance coverage achieved across all 50 states for both employees and contractors

    • Multi-functional HR organization built from a single role over the duration of the engagement

    “This is the work that taught me how to build People Ops from zero — and how every system you choose at this stage either compounds into infrastructure that supports growth, or compounds into technical debt that costs you a year to undo. We chose infrastructure.”

    — Martyse Rosario, Founder

  • Building a global People function from scratch — and through an acquisition — at a venture-backed tech company.

    THE SITUATION

    A venture-backed tech company brought me on as employee #6 and the company's global HR leader. The team was spread across the US and the UK, growing fast, with no formal People function in place. Within months of my arrival, the company entered an acquisition process — bringing 30 employees from a separate organization into a single new umbrella, while continuing to scale the original team.

    THE CHALLENGE

    Acquisitions test every part of a People function at once: legal complexity, cultural integration, compensation alignment, internal communications, employee relations, and operational continuity. Doing it well at any company is hard. Doing it as a six-person startup with no existing HR infrastructure, while standing up that infrastructure in real time, is harder. Both had to happen in parallel.

    WHAT I BUILT

    • Stood up the People function from scratch: policies, systems, HRIS, hiring process, performance framework, comp philosophy

    • Managed end-to-end hiring for 25 roles including C-suite positions, building a lean and effective recruiting process

    • Led the full acquisition transition — integrating 30 incoming employees, navigating legal, cultural, and operational complexity across two merging entities

    • Built and executed people strategies, policies, and cultural programs supporting employees across the US, UK, and EU

    • Benchmarked compensation using Mercer data and partnered with human capital management to reduce time-to-hire and cost-per-hire against industry standards

    • Scaled headcount from 6 to 40+ employees through the full engagement

    OUTCOMES

    • Successfully integrated 30 acquired employees through one of the most operationally complex HR moments a company can face

    • Built a global People function spanning three regions (US, UK, EU) in under a year

    • Reduced time-to-hire and cost-per-hire below industry benchmarks

    • Established the cultural and operational continuity needed to make the post-acquisition entity function as one company

    “Acquisitions test every part of a People function at once — culture, comp, communications, legal, employee relations. You either have the infrastructure to absorb the shock or you don't. We built it as we went, which is the kind of pressure I find I do my best work under.”

    — Martyse Rosario, Founder

  • Multi-site People & Operations leadership at a life sciences co-working network.

    THE SITUATION

    A life sciences co-working network operated across Los Angeles, Boston, and New York — supporting 20+ internal employees and 15+ member biotech companies. The People function had to operate at two levels simultaneously: as an internal HR partner for the network's own staff, and as a member-facing operations layer that the resident biotech companies depended on for their daily work.

    THE CHALLENGE

    Most People roles either look inward (employee experience, compliance, performance) or outward (customer-facing operations). This one had to do both — and the work had to demonstrably contribute to revenue, not just employee satisfaction. The challenge was running People Ops as a revenue function without sacrificing the depth of internal HR support either side of the business needed.

    WHAT I BUILT

    • Directed all People Operations across three sites — HR compliance, benefits strategy, organizational design, employee relations

    • Directed daily operations for the network's first life sciences co-working hub: office, lab, hot desk, and private suite environments

    • Drove the people and operational strategies that powered membership growth across the network

    • Produced internal and external events hosting 200+ attendees per event, building community across resident biotech companies

    • Built community programming through philanthropic partnerships with major life sciences institutions, deepening the network's standing in the regional biotech ecosystem

    OUTCOMES

    • $1.2M in revenue improvement directly attributable to people and operational strategy

    • 25% membership growth across the network

    • Strengthened the network's position as a leading life sciences co-working hub on the West Coast

    “This was where I learned that People Ops, done well, is a revenue function — not a cost center. The line between “great culture” and “growing membership” turned out to be much shorter than I expected.”

    — Martyse Rosario, Founder