When Paddle signed a Letter of Intent to acquire Profitwell, an international firm with offices spanning the US and Argentina, the company needed specialized expertise to conduct People & Organization Diligence and manage the ensuing integration. I joined initially as an advisor and then stepped in post-close as Interim Chief People Officer, filling a critical capability gap during a 12-month period tasked with merging two distinct cultures and operating systems.
My mandate was threefold: retain and organize key talent from both Paddle and Profitwell through the transition, harmonize HR systems and policies across the UK, Europe, US, and Argentina offices, and build and operate an integrated roadmap for the year following close. To achieve this, I established a tailored employment strategy for each employee across entities, ensuring competitive and compliant pay and benefits while leveraging the newly combined scale to improve benefit quality and lower costs. I brought on a fractional Talent Acquisition leader through the close period dedicated to the Americas to ensure revenue-generating roles stayed staffed in this key growth market, and I partnered with the strategy team to implement the organization's integrated product-driven business model, aligning organizational structure and incentive compensation design to support it.
The results were substantial: we successfully retained key talent from both organizations throughout the full 12-month integration, reduced combined benefits costs by 15% while simultaneously improving coverage, and rolled out the new incentive compensation design on schedule. This work earned recognition from the Executive Committee and Commercial Leadership for effective stewardship of the cultural integration. Notably, despite significant market headwinds throughout 2023, the company sustained growth through the entirety of the integration period — a testament to the stability the people and systems work provided during a high-stakes organizational transition.
