About us
Fifteen years scaling
people functions
that actually work.
My name is Miriam, and I have spent my career leading People teams and people strategy in global tech firms navigating scale, transformation, change, innovation and flexible working. I am not old school HR, I am commercially sharp, pragmatic, and focused on what actually drives performance and retention.
Education
- •BA (Hons) Business & Management, Queen's University Belfast
- •CIPD Level 7 in progress
My story
I understand the operational demands of startup and scale-up environments, and what that means when budgets are lean and expectations are high. I'm comfortable in ambiguity, I move quickly, and I focus on what actually drives performance, retention, and operational efficiency.
The longer story, in eight chapters. Click through — it's worth it.
Chapter 01 / 08
The call centre
I started my career in call centres. I had left university without a degree, done a short stint in the university off-licence, and taken my first full-time job as a call centre agent. I did that for two years and, as it turned out, I was extremely good at it. I was promoted to manager quickly, and at one stage I was running a team of forty people, every one of them senior to me. Then came a two-week secondment to the recruitment team, who wanted someone they could trust with high-volume hiring. That was my aha moment.
Chapter 02 / 08
The kitchen company
I left the call centre for a head of sales role at a kitchen company. The role turned out not to be head of sales at all, and I learned that family-run businesses who like things done their way were not for me. It was also my first run-in with an HR consultant: they hired one to come in and fire me, because everyone was afraid of me. I am still a little proud of that.
Chapter 03 / 08
Invest Northern Ireland
From there I joined Invest Northern Ireland's foreign direct investment team, specialising in IT. I went to trade shows all over the world, meeting CEOs, CTOs and founders, understanding their pain points and helping them see Northern Ireland as the home for their tech teams and R&D centres. Close airports, good education, brilliant graduates, sensible costs, good Wi-Fi. I had a lot of success and a very good time. After two years, I asked myself what I could do with everything I now knew about the IT industry.
Chapter 04 / 08
The call from New York
The answer was IT recruitment. I started as a resourcer, made consultant in three months and senior consultant in thirteen. The day I was promoted, I handed in my notice. I had been headhunted by a client who had come through Invest NI: a New York company called ShopKeep, who needed fifteen Ruby engineers they could not afford to hire at home. I happened to have five Ruby engineers on my books, ready to go. The rest is history.
Chapter 05 / 08
ShopKeep & Slice
At ShopKeep I found a friend and mentor in their CTO, Jason Ordway. We had four brilliant years together, and I was promoted to Head of People in my second. Then Jason and I left and did it all over again at Slice, starting from scratch and building something bigger. I was Head of People for Slice UK and Europe, around a hundred and fifty people, before my role grew into a global remit.
Chapter 06 / 08
We Got POP
Next came a short, happy stint at We Got POP, a female-founded film-tech company in London and my first B2B2C business: software that consumers use, sold to businesses. Wonderful products and a fabulous CEO in Kate McLaughlin, who I would work with again in a heartbeat. They were acquired by Entertainment Partners shortly after I joined, so my time there was brief, and it broke me into my final permanent role.
Chapter 07 / 08
Deel
Deel: a global, remote role at one of the employer-of-record giants. By the time I arrived I was Head of HR for around five hundred people in product and engineering, in pretty much every country under the sun. When I say it was a twenty-four-hour gig, I am not exaggerating. I led five M&A integrations end to end, from teams of four to a hundred and fifty, and by the time I left my remit had grown to around eight hundred people across product, engineering and data. Deel taught me the value of my time and where I want to place my effort, and I made friends there I would be lost without.
Chapter 08 / 08
Kerbache HR
And that brings me to this consultancy, which I have owned for four years. One more tidbit: while I was at ShopKeep I went back to university, five years of evenings alongside the day job, and finally got my degree, a 2:1 in Business Management. It is one of the things I am proudest of to this day.
My background is scrappy, my experience is hard-won, and it has made me who I am today.
Where I've worked
Interim Chief People Officer
Senior Leadership Team member for a venture-backed InsurTech scaling past a £4M fundraise — leading global People strategy for 100+ employees across five countries, including compliant international hiring and a full HRIS migration.
Senior Global HR Lead
Sole strategic People advisor to the CTO and 15 Directors/VPs at a Series C–D, 500+ employee global HR tech business spanning four continents — leading 5 global M&A integrations end-to-end.
Head of People
Appointed by the CEO to lead People through a critical growth phase at a private equity-backed SaaS business, then led HR integration following acquisition by Entertainment Partners — scaling headcount by 50% in six months.
Director of People & Operations
Led the international People function for a Series B–D fintech scaling to ~200 employees globally, managing a team of five, delivering 15+ in-house hires, and spearheading IPO audit readiness.
Head of People
First People hire, building the UK People function from 0 to 100 employees at a Series A–C tech business — delivering 30+ in-house hires and owning the full People agenda from HRBP to Talent Acquisition.
Recent project work
Delivered across fintech, SaaS, AI, RegTech, media, travel, consumer and creative scale-ups.
HRIS implementation & migration
End-to-end HiBob rollouts and migrations from iTrent, Workable and legacy systems: data migration, configuration, testing and HR team handover.
M&A & people integration
HR integration across the UK, Europe and Asia, including a 200-person transfer and onboarding programmes for 300+ employees.
Performance & talent frameworks
Performance management and talent frameworks for 500+ employees: succession planning, capability mapping and workforce planning.
Compensation & levelling
Compensation frameworks: salary banding, bonus structures and pay benchmarking, tied to performance and progression.
HR compliance & policy
Global HR compliance and policy refreshes (50+ policies) across jurisdictions: employment-law alignment and risk reduction.
HR transformation & change
Multi-site HR transformation: organisational change, large-scale unionised redundancy and trade union consultation.
Interim People leadership
Built and scaled global People functions from scratch, partnering with EORs and PEOs, advising on org design and retention.
Impact
1,000+
Employees scaled across teams, from 1 to 1,000+, across multiple continents
A→D
Funding stages worked across, Series A to Series D and through to exit
20+
Founders and CEOs supported across scaling tech, AI and creative businesses
15+
Global M&A integrations led end-to-end, plus IPO audit readiness for a regulated fintech
What it's like to work with me
"HR that's actually useful: honest advice for the founder, a fair deal for the team, and no drama in between."
Approach
I'm direct and commercially minded. I build strong relationships with founders and leadership teams, bringing strategic clarity alongside hands-on execution. I enjoy getting into the detail when it's needed, whether that's leadership coaching or HRIS configuration. I've implemented and optimised HiBob, BambooHR, Rippling, Deel and SuccessFactors, among others.
I'm not learning on your dime. I've built comp frameworks, run HRIS implementations from scratch, sat in the room during fundraises, and managed the people side of multiple acquisitions and an IPO audit. Whatever stage you're at, chances are I've already navigated it somewhere else.