Sema Lakhani

*Strategic advisor to venture-backed tech and creative startups, building investor-ready people infrastructure to secure funding and accelerate scale.

• Funding Enablement: Design and implement scalable People roadmaps for early-stage (Seed to Series B) companies, directly contributing to $47M+ in collective fundraising thus far. Investor due diligence consistently cited "operational and cultural

*Established the inaugural global People function to de-risk and accelerate a $1.2B market entry into Latin America and EMEA.

• Ground-Up Function Build: Architected the complete HR operating model from zero to one for 4 new countries, including localized compensation bands, remote-first hiring playbooks, and cultural competency training for U.S.-based leaders.

• Velocity Scaling: Executed a mis

*Embedded strategic HR leadership for SMEs and venture-backed portfolios, focused on operational de-risking and foundation-building for scale or exit.

• Litigation Risk Mitigation: Conducted forensic policy audits and immersive manager training simulations for a 12-company portfolio, identifying and resolving 100% of high-risk ER/EEOC exposures, preventing potential litigation with 7-figure liabi

*Built and scaled a holistic People function for a high-growth marketing SAAS platform, culminating in a seamless, talent-retentive acquisition.

• Growth Infrastructure: Designed and launched the company's first skills-based leveling framework and equitable grant system, providing the clarity and career architecture to support a headcount doubling in 18 months while improving critical engineer re

*Led HR operations for a disruptive fintech, managing a complex, global network of independent contractors and employees.

• Global Compliance Automation: Engineered an automated compliance workflow for 300+ remote independent agents across 9 distinct regulatory regimes, integrating local payroll and building immutable audit trails, enabling scalable growth.

• Operational Efficiency: Reduced payr

*Modernized talent systems for multi–state expansion across construction and property management divisions.

• Performance Transformation: Redesigned the performance management system for 500+ field and construction employees, utilizing competency matrices and HRIS customization to directly tie individual goals to project ROI and portfolio growth.

• Leadership Pipeline & Cost Savings: Increased i

*Managed People strategy in a high-stakes, intellectual-property-driven environment with extreme workload cycles.

• Sustainability Protocols: Introduced trauma-informed employee relations practices and data-driven workload analytics to proactively identify and mitigate burnout risk during landmark, multi-year litigation cycles (e.g., biometric privacy).

• Retention of Critical Assets: Maintained

*Standardized operations and elevated the employee experience post-acquisition across the entire corporate portfolio.

• Post-Merger Integration: Unified disparate HR systems post-acquisition, migrating all data to Paychex Flex and creating cross-training playbooks, achieving 98% data integrity and reducing standard onboarding time by 40%.

• Experience-Driven Retention: The creation of a consiste

*Built compliance and training infrastructure for high-risk, distributed security operations.

• Risk Mitigation: Overhauled OSHA/FLSA compliance programs and digitized credential tracking with mobile-first training modules, reducing worksite compliance violations by 80%.

• Business Development Enablement: Achieved a 100% pass rate on all client contract audits, with compliance excellence being a