AI Transformation Partner
By subscribing you agree to Substack's Terms of Use, their Privacy Policy, and their Information Collection Notice.
AI FOR PEOPLE & TALENT TEAMS
I help People, HR, and Talent teams turn AI ideas into useful workflows, internal tools, and better decisions.
My work combines AI strategy, people analytics, and hands-on building. We can work together through a team hackathon, project-based consulting, fractional leadership, or one-on-one coaching.
“He quickly understood our workflow and built an automated solution that streamlined the entire process.”
The Plus Side Team · Recruiting Operations Platform
“Nelson helped me change my way of thinking about the different ways to leverage automation tools and AI to work more efficiently.”
Alvin Belt · VP of Operations · AC Brands
“I went from knowing very little about how AI tools could be leveraged in my day to day to actively thinking about different automations that could be used to save us time.”
Nicole Iturbe · Senior Director · AC Brands
It usually starts with a recruiter copying information between systems, or a people ops specialist rebuilding the same report every week. Employees ask questions that have already been answered somewhere in a policy doc.
AI might help, but it's only one part of the problem.
The dashboard needs information from your HRIS, ATS, and several spreadsheets. The assistant needs current policies it can trust. The automation needs clear inputs, ownership, and review before it can safely do the work.
Before building a dashboard, we need to know which decisions it should support. Before automating a process, we need to understand what should change and how we’ll know whether it worked.
That is why AI inside a People team cannot be separated from its workflows, systems, data, and people.
How work gets done, what work gets done, where the information lives, and what you do after that.
Your team works on problems already sitting on its desk. A job description from intake notes. Screen notes. Handbook answers. Interview write-ups.
People learn by doing. Your team redesigns a workflow, builds a small internal tool, or creates an assistant. They leave with working prototypes.
I come in as the talent engineer for the team. I build the intake tool, connect the systems, or automate the recurring process.
Intake that has to become a req before anyone sources. The job in the ATS, the post, and what is actually live on the board. An offer accepted, then entered again in the HRIS.
We agree on the scope, deliverables, and handover before I build. Larger work can be delivered in phases.
Using data to understand and drive outcomes for your employee experience.
Intelligence is a way of working. Knowledge management. Data is the numbers in the HRIS or the ATS. It is also the spreadsheet, the policy, and the answer that already exists somewhere.
Before we build a dashboard, we need to know which decision it should support.
The big-picture strategy on how the actual work is getting changed.
What does compensation look like when you are managing new hires, and when you are managing agents versus humans? What do we think about the skills it takes to manage agents versus managing humans?
I've been fortunate enough to lead talent technology and people analytics teams at places like Figma, Sonos, and Wayfair. I've seen the inner workings of growth startups to 20,000+ enterprise operations.
I've been the first hire in the people analytics role. I set the strategy and vision in multiple places. I implemented Greenhouse from scratch, starting with an internal tool, through to a production-wide ATS.
I have done statistical analysis to identify areas of opportunity across the employee lifecycle, like pay equity and performance management. I have led multi-day AI workshops to build internal capability, and to build internal automations and agents.
I also founded Augi, a product and research studio exploring AI and the future of work.
“I went from knowing very little about how AI tools could be leveraged in my day to day to actively thinking about different automations that could be used to save us time.”