Natalie Ledbetter

  1. People
  2. Fractional People Operations Leader
  3. Chief People Officer
  4. Head of People

Driving impact on day one, I help executives and founders build programs that support, develop, supercharge and retain their biggest asset: PEOPLE.

With 20 years of experience and the last 10 years in startups and early-stage Venture Capital, I am a People Operations Executive and former Operating Partner at Boldstart Ventures.


As a People Operations Leader, I have built and scaled three growth stage tech startups (both B2C and B2B), owning People Operations end-to-end (Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Employee Experience/Culture, L&D, Facilities). I architect people programs (for example: codifying core values, structured recruiting…

Natalie Ledbetter
My name is Natalie Ledbetter, and some of the things that I bring to a role like this are I would just say background-wise. I have 20 years of experience and the last ten have actually been in three different growth startups. As a department leader, typically I lead all of the people operations, so each is talent acquisition, learning, and development. Anything that touches employee experience and culture all the way to facilities if there is a physical location. So I have the pattern recognition of things that break down. when you do this three times in a row, you end up with significant pattern recognition because you realize there are inflection points that every single organization hits at very similar times. So the beauty of it is I can get ahead of things which it's really hard to get proactive in startups. So that pattern recognition facilitates this knowledge of being able to say this is going to break down at 20 people, this is going to break down at 50 people, this is going to break down to 200 people, all of those things so we can get ahead of that. Additionally, I worked with Bold START Ventures, which is an early CVC, and I was there for three years. I built people ops as a service and I'm pretty knowledgeable in terms of working with both small but also more developed teams, working directly with founders through all types of advisory services, answering questions, and just being a lifeline when they want to pick up the phone or working through building programs, bespoke programs alongside the founders. The other thing I would say is just that I have a very large network based on those three opportunities and then going into BC as well. I have a pretty significant network of people. We pull from talent to customers to advisors to potential angels, and this curiosity and sort of desire that I have that sort of permeates through everything is just a really strong desire, to solve new interesting problems. The last thing is that I'm highly execution focused. I'm very comfortable in a autonomous environment. I seem to work seamlessly with most personalities. And do you have the ability to build trust in order to introduce new ideas and help people kind of think about things in a different way?

Experience

  • Chief

    Chief

    Member

    Jun 2020 - Present

    Women have always been powerful. We’re not waiting for a seat at the table — we're building our own.

  • Boldstart Ventures

    Boldstart Ventures

    Operating Partner, Head of People and Platform

    Nov 2019 - Present

    day one partner + true believer for enterprise infrastructure/SaaS founders

    • - Harnessing pattern recognition from scaling 3 early stage to hyper-growth startups, I'm building "People Ops as Service," augmenting our early-stage companies as their People Ops Exec - Architecting bespoke People Ops programs focusing on the entire employee lifecycle, from attraction to separation - Partnering to develop employer brands, codifying values & employee value props, enabling our teams to hire top talent across all functions, globally - Developing end-to-end, scalable, structured & equitable recruitment processes; training portfolio teams on interviewing, negotiating offers & using data to prove recruitment effectiveness - Introducing Exec talent (Saving our companies over $2.7M thus far) - Building total rewards (comp. bands, V.1 of leveling, equity grants & strategic benefits offerings from relocation to mental health, to education stipends & compassionate leaves) - Ensuring the development of DEIB programs that engage and retain - Developing tool kits for internal & external comms throughout Covid, RIF's, employee terminations, employee deaths, sexual harassment as well as other E.R. scenario planning - Counseling founders on codifying their cultures, threading their values through feedback, hiring, performance reviews & leadership development - Driving strategic org. design exercises that supercharge team velocity and allow them to work more effectively - Act as a sounding board for 30+ founders, day or night to ensure that they have a People Ops partner to bounce ideas with, ask questions and gain actionable learnings and feedback from - Running internal and external thought leadership events providing founders w/ access to C-suite Execs in a number of enterprises, delivering content that is stage-specific (Freemium models, Pricing strategy, Scaling your "founder mindset,” Building DevRel, Compensation modeling etc).The Wall Street Journal covered “COVID-19, Forcing Mechanism for Accelerating Digital Transformation or a Reason to Hit PAUSE?”- Harnessing pattern recognition from scaling 3 early stage to hyper-growth startups, I'm building "People Ops as Service," augmenting our early-stage companies as their People Ops Exec - Architecting bespoke People Ops programs focusing on the entire employee lifecycle, from attraction to separation - Partnering to develop employer brands, codifying values & employee value props, enabling our teams to hire top talent across all functions, globally - Developing end-to-end, scalable, structured & equitable recruitment processes; training portfolio teams on interviewing, negotiating offers & using data to prove recruitment effectiveness - Introducing Exec talent (Saving our companies over $2.7M thus far) - Building total rewards (comp. bands, V.1 of leveling, equity grants & strategic benefits offerings from relocation to mental health, to education stipends & compassionate leaves) - Ensuring the development of DEIB programs that engage and retain - Developing tool kits for internal & external comms throughout Covid, RIF's, employee terminations, employee deaths, sexual harassment as well as other E.R. scenario planning - Counseling founders on codifying their cultures, threading their values through feedback, hiring, performance reviews & leadership development - Driving strategic org. design exercises that supercharge team velocity and allow them to work more effectively - Act as a sounding board for 30+ founders, day or night to ensure that they have a People Ops partner to bounce ideas with, ask questions and gain actionable learnings and feedback from - Running internal and external thought leadership events providing founders w/ access to C-suite Execs in a number of enterprises, delivering content that is stage-specific (Freemium models, Pricing strategy, Scaling your "founder mindset,” Building DevRel, Compensation modeling etc).The Wall Street Journal covered “COVID-19, Forcing Mechanism for Accelerating Digital Transformation or a Reason to Hit PAUSE?” Skills: Diversity & Inclusion · Employee Benefits Design · Employee Training · Leadership Development · Values Alignment · Organizational Design · International Expansion · Feedback Management · Talent Development · Recruiting · HR Consulting
  • Stash Invest

    Stash Invest

    Vice President of People Operations

    May 2023 - Jun 2019

    Banking. Investing. Education. One seamless experience.

    • • Built the HR, Talent Acquisition, Employee Experience, L&D and Facilities functions from the ground up, represented the people function on the Executive team and in board meetings • Owned and forecasted (with CFO) people ops budget annually, ensuring transparency into people and spending • Lead a team of seven HR, Recruiting and Facilities professionals, owning strategy and execution for all People Ops initiatives at Stash • Scaled the company from 27 people by over 750% to nearly 300 in 2.5 years while staying highly focused on diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging (ask about this!) • Benchmarked and built benefits offerings and policies for all Stash employees--medical, dental, equity in the company, 401k, FSA, Commuter, flexible time off, parental leave, education stipends, catered lunches etc. • Leveled the org and developed comp banding and career ladders for every role in the org • Built performance management including bi-annual performance reviews and a separate bi-annual compensation review process, running company-wide trainings prior to each launch • Developed end-to-end interviewing processes for every role, across every team at the company and all interview training (responsibility of all recruiters on my team) including a required kick off meeting and candidate profile intake with hiring managers • Built and scaled a 2 day onboarding process for all new employees with all department heads presenting and familiarizing new teammates with the history, vision, strategy and all key members of the executive team • Built all processes/policies and executed trainings (when needed) for OKR's, All Hands, promotions, comp adjustments, employee referrals and bonuses, sexual harassment, visa sponsorship, team building events, 30 and 60 day check-ins with new hires etc • Owned L&D, including introducing required manager bootcamp (LifeLabs) for all people managers • Moved two offices and project managed a move and 8-month build out of a custom space for Stash
  • Text Iq

    Text Iq

    Advisor to the Head of People and People Operations Team

    Aug 2019 - Jul 2021

    AI for Sensitive Information

  • Curalate

    Curalate

    Director of Talent Acquisitions

    Dec 2014 - Nov 2016

    Curalate is a marketing and analytics suite for visual social media platforms.

    • Acquired, Bazaarvoice 2020) • Built Curalate’s recruiting organization and all programs and processes around hiring from the ground up, as the company entered hyper growth • Scaled the company by over 240% in 1.8 years across New York, Philadelphia and Seattle offices • Lead all strategy around employer branding, marketing and positioning in the marketplace, including thought leadership pieces, speaking engagements and events • Maintained an 83% positive candidate experience rating based on survey results sent to all candidates interviewing at the company (Greenhouse benchmark is 73% positive rating); integrated a “white glove” policy for bringing candidates through the interview process • Developed all interviewing processes for every role, across every team (45+ unique positions); provided all goals, competencies and lines of questioning for every interviewer • Drove process around running effective kick off meetings with hiring managers to hone in on desired qualities and competencies and developing candidate personas • Implemented highly data-driven method of hiring, utilizing Greenhouse reporting, slicing and analyzing pipelines, identifying and rectifying process bottlenecks • Established KPI’s for the People Ops Team of 5 holding weekly 1:1’s and bi-weekly team meetings, providing continuous coaching, running role-plays, negotiation scenarios • Unveiled surveying of new hires (by their managers) at 90 days ensuring employees are set up for success, identifying management/training issues and continuously improving our hiring processes; current metric: What is the probability that you would hire this person again? 91.6% positive rating across all disciplines • Made all key senior hires and managed a company-wide push to up-level our existing team; senior hires included CFO, VP of Client Success, VP of Product Management, Director of Demand Generation, Director of Sales Development, Director of Enterprise Sales, Director of Sales Operations, Controller etc
  • Shapeways

    Shapeways

    Director Talent Acquisition

    May 2013 - Nov 2014

    Enabling product creation at scale is the core of Shapeways’ innovative technology platform.

    • (Company IPO 2021) • Led all recruitment strategy and execution efforts for all roles at Shapeways NYC--as only member of HR/Recruiting team--from end to end. Growing the team from approximately 80 to 200, with two disparate populations: knowledge/corporate workers, and manufactering employees. • Owned all employer branding strategy including managing budgets, execution of plans and outside vendor relationships • Acted as main HR point of contact (until I brought on an HR Manager) on ER issues, terminations, foreign visas, discrimination claims, on-boarding of new employees and HR policies and procedures • Helped devise all company retention strategies and employee engagement initiatives including the roll out of the company's first engagement survey via Culture Amp • Cultivated relationships with our VC funds, fund portfolio organizations, city and county organizations, universities, professors, consultancies etc. to help build our talent funnel • Orchestrated deal to scale manufacturing services and packing for Google: Made With Code partnership
  • Galileo Global Advisors

    Galileo Global Advisors

    Director of Human Resources and Talent Acquisition

    Sep 2007 - Apr 2013

    galileo global advisors llc includes a team of seasoned professionals with multilingual and multicultural backgrounds and many decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and strategic advice. we are dedicated to helping globally ambitious clients succeed, and we make that happen through our extensive knowledge of global capital markets and business savvy, as well as through a unique network of relationships with decision makers around the world.

    • • Owned human resources strategy and execution for all programs and plans as the only People Operations resource in the company • Owned benefits (medical, dental, 401k) strategy and roll out from end-to-end, including benchmarking plans, negotiating rates and training employees and administering all • Built, drove and owned all recruiting efforts for the firm from start to finish • Owned all visa processes for non-Americans for entire firm • Forecasted spend on all outside vendor products and services, including: telecom, computer hardware/software, subscriptions/memberships, events and office supplies on an annual basis and owned yearly budgets with CFO accordingly • Directed all PR initiatives for firm, working directly with digital media outlets, television and radio stations on news stories about CEO and firm • Managed all content for company website, copy edited all Huffington Post blogs on behalf of the CEO • Secured and developed Go-To-Market strategy for obtaining speaking and sponsorship roles on behalf of CEO, for worldwide conferences and events • Secured and planned all company events from end to end • Developed decks, pitch books and strategy materials for client meetings
  • Cyrus Knits

    Account Executive

    Sep 2004 - Nov 2005

    • • Managed all specialty store accounts in the Midwest, Northeast, West Coast, and Southwest, increasing sales overall by 55%, totaling approximately $250K/season • Managed strategic sales cycle, including: calling on new accounts, presenting product, and closing the sale • Developed new business through phone pitching, trade shows and showroom meetings • Managed a team of road sales reps in my territories and ensured sales goals were being hit • Directed PR campaign including advertorials, photo shoots, press packs and held strategic branding meetings • Worked with clients at trade shows in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago
  • Time out Group

    Time out Group

    Intern

    Jan 2004 - Mar 2004

    The best of the city

  • Marcus Evans Group

    Event Producer

    Aug 2002 - Feb 2003

    marcus evans is an international business events and information company with five main principle areas of business activity

    • (Closed their production office in Houston in March 2003 and laid off entire staff) • Built and delivered highly profitable conferences exceeding established revenue targets and delegate attendance projections • Wrote entire program and produced: “Web-enabled Learning for Energy,” “Enterprise Data Management and BI,” and two “Executaries Forums” • Sold key industry players into speaking roles • Created and presented sales briefs, as well as marketing and sponsorship programs to support these campaigns

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