People Strategy & Executive Coaching – Dallas, TX
For twenty-six years, my work came down to one question: how do you move a business forward through the people in it?
Not around them, not in spite of them – through them. How you build the strategy, the structures, and the conditions where people do their best work, and the business wins as a result. That’s the space that has always excited me: leveraging people, equipping them, motivating them, connecting them to each other and to the work that matters, then celebrating when the people and the business succeed together.
Most of what gets in the way of success comes down to lack of connection.
Between leadership and the team.
Between the people strategy and the business strategy.
Between what a leader intends and what their systems actually reward.
The work is finding those gaps, though sometimes it isn’t a gap at all, but a place where something more is needed, or something different, or something that was never built in the first place. Once you can see it clearly, you can start to close the distance.
26 Years Building Strategy at Scale
I spent more than two decades at Dave & Buster’s, growing from recruiting coordinator to head of HR. We scaled from 26 locations to nearly 250, and from about 3,000 employees to more than 23,000. Multiple acquisitions. Public and private cycles. Five CEOs. A pandemic. The kind of scale where there’s nowhere to hide. You live with every decision you make, and you answer for it.
At heart, I’ve always been an operator who found my way through HR. I can sit in a strategy conversation, a P&L review, and a discussion about a hard people decision in the same afternoon, because to me they were never three different conversations. HR was never paperwork. It wasn’t compliance, or parties, or investigations. At its best, it has always been about one thing: driving business strategy, through people.
What Working Together Looks Like
That’s the work I do now with companies and leaders in growth, transition, and reinvention. Sometimes it’s strategy. Sometimes it’s naming what’s not working. Sometimes it’s building what’s missing. And sometimes it’s sitting across from one leader who’s carrying more than they can quite put into words.
However it starts, the work always comes back to the same place: the people, and what becomes possible when they’re truly aligned with the business.
For organizations, that might look like interim HR leadership, a clear-eyed diagnostic, or a broader people strategy. For individual leaders, it’s one-on-one leadership and executive coaching – focused, confidential support from someone who’s actually sat in the seat.
Frequently Asked Questions
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A people strategy consultant works at the intersection of HR and business strategy - helping companies build their organizational conditions, leadership structures, reward systems, and talent infrastructures that let the business actually execute. It’s different from traditional HR consulting in that the work starts from the business problem, not the HR program.
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A fractional CHRO provides senior people strategy leadership on a part-time or project basis - typically for companies that need executive-level HR thinking but aren’t ready to justify a full-time hire. That said, fractional CHRO is one configuration among several. RSA also works alongside existing HR teams, directly with executive teams, and on discrete strategic projects. The right structure depends on what you’re actually navigating, and we’ll work together to defined what that can look like for your business.
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Companies in growth, transition, or reinvention – often small- or mid-size, often at an inflection point. Sometimes they have an HR function and need strategic altitude above it. Sometimes they don’t have strategic people leadership at all. Sometimes the business is performing, but something in the people layer isn’t translating. The common thread is that the work matters and the stakes are real.
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Coaching is one-on-one, confidential, and focused on the individual leader – their decisions, their development, their blind spots. Consulting is focused on the organization – its strategy, systems, and diagnosis. RSA does both, and sometimes the same engagement involves elements of each. Coaching clients don’t need to be part of a company-level engagement.
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Coaching is one-on-one, confidential, and built around where you actually are — not a fixed curriculum. Most engagements fall into a few shapes:
Executive coaching — ongoing 1:1 support for a leader who wants a thinking partner over time. These run in three-month, six-month, or longer-term engagements, depending on how deep the work goes and the pace that fits your goals.
Leader onboarding — focused support through the first 90 days in a new or expanded role, when the early moves matter most and the learning curve is steepest.
Leadership reset — a defined window to step back, see clearly, and shift the trajectory when something isn't working the way it should. Often the right fit at a high-stakes inflection point.
Mid-career coaching — for leaders building toward what's next. When it helps, this can include a conversation with a sponsor or mentor in your corner, so the work isn't happening in isolation.
A single strategic consult — one focused session when you have a specific decision or challenge to work through, and don't need an ongoing engagement.
Not sure which fits? That's normal, and it's exactly what a first conversation is for. We'll figure out the right start point together.
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Yes. The practice is based in Dallas, Texas, and serves the Dallas area in person. Remote consulting and coaching engagements are available for companies and leaders outside DFW.
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The best way to find out is through a conversation. The intro form on the Contact page takes two minutes. Describe what you’re navigating – even if you’re not sure how to name it yet – and we’ll go from there.
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Sometimes a company doesn’t need ongoing leadership — it needs one specific thing built, fixed, or figured out. That’s where project work fits. A few examples of what that can look like:
Compensation structures — building or refreshing pay frameworks so they’re competitive and fair, and connect rewards to results and your team to the business.
Engagement assessment and action planning — understanding what your people are actually experiencing, then turning that into a plan you can act on.
Benefits and open enrollment strategy — partnering with your brokers and vendors to shape an approach that works for your people and your budget.
Succession planning — identifying who's next, where the gaps are, and how to develop toward them before you need to.
Performance management — designing review and feedback systems that actually drive performance instead of creating paperwork.
Internal communications strategy — closing the distance between what leadership intends and what teams actually hear.
Team-building and retreats — designing experiences that don’t just fill a day on the calendar; they build real connection and enable focused, honest conversation.
This is a starting point, not a menu. The right project depends on what you're navigating, and the strongest engagements often surface from a single conversation about where things feel stuck.
Let’s Connect
If something here is landing — for your company or for you as an individual leader — the next step is a short intro form. Tell me what you’re navigating.