Building high-performing teams in fast-growth startups takes more than best practices; it requires ruthless clarity and the right balance of structure. In this episode Ali Farrell, three-time Chief People Officer now at Apprentice, draws on her corporate, VC-backed, PE-backed and bootstrapped startup experience to challenge outdated HR norms. She explains why ditching performance improvement plans beats overengineering, how providing just enough structure fuels scale, and why ownership and curiosity matter more than credentials. Tune in for Ali’s real-world tactics on leading through chaos and creating teams that thrive in the messy middle.
Ali Farrell
I am a boundary-less executive and people leader with 15 years of proven expertise building scalable, measurable, and effective people and talent strategies across public, bootstrapped (founder-led), private equity (PE), and venture capital (VC)-backed organizations. I’ve been called a visionary, a trailblazer, an insightful collaborator, a leader who achieves high quality results both individually and through motivating, influencing, and leading others, bottom-line focused, a data-driven co-creator, a connector of human and business outcomes, someone other people would follow, a candid and fearless problem solver with high tenacity, and an Innovator (D/I), with high resilience and adaptability.
