For people who never planned to lead, hire, or manage.

Cut-out portrait of a founder over a lilac-to-orange panel

Cut-out portrait of a firm partner over a lilac-to-orange panel

At PRISM the people function gets built once and built properly — by one senior operator who has done it before, for founders holding a company together and partners holding a firm together.

Fractional HR that speaks founder

Two editions

Two rooms that look nothing alike and need almost exactly the same thing: someone senior who can say what happens next, and then go and build it. Pick the room you are living in — it re-sets the cover and four spreads below.

Room A — For founders

Hiring faster than the handbook

Recent hires are disappointing, even the expensive ones. Trust across the leadership team is thinner than it should be, and the days disappear into complaints and people problems no one planned for.

Onboarding that keeps up with the offer letters going out.
Pay bands and equity that survive the next diligence.
Multi-state exposure nobody has looked at yet.
Engineers who became managers with no training at all.

10 to 50 people,
funded and growingThe range where a company outgrows informal HR.

Torn paper panels in lilac, orange, cream and black

The work

Six ways to bring
in a people function

Six plates, scoped and priced before anything begins.

Fractional HR leadership

An embedded, part-time people lead inside the leadership team: in the meetings, on the hard calls, accountable for the same numbers everyone else is.

RetainedA regular monthly cadence

Compliance & policy

The handbook, classification and jurisdiction work nobody wants to own, written so a regulator and a new hire can both read it.

ProjectA finite, scoped block

Benefits & foundations

Enough expertise to set direction on benefits and foundations — and the judgment to bring in a specialist when it's truly needed. PRISM is not a comp-and-benefits shop; it knows the line, and who's on the other side of it.

ProjectA finite, scoped block

Hiring systems

Structured interviews, scorecards and an onboarding week that still works when four people start on the same Monday.

ProjectOngoing option

Performance & review

Review cycles managers can run without a consultant in the room, and feedback that lands before it becomes an exit.

RetainedCycle by cycle

Sensitive matters

Investigations, exits and restructures handled quietly, in step with counsel, with the written record kept properly from day one.

AdvisoryAs needed

At PRISM, scope is written down before the first invoice, and the price is the price.

The method

Diagnose. Build.
Then hand it over.

Read the room

Interviews with the people who actually run things, a look at every document that governs employment, and one honest written picture of where the risk and the friction really sit. No survey platform, no forty-slide deck.

Weeks 1–2
Written diagnostic

Build the spine

The smallest set of policies, systems and rituals that will hold the organisation together at twice its size. Built with the team, in the tools they already have, in the order that removes the most pain first.

Weeks 3–8
Handbook, bands, manager kit

Hand it over

Managers trained on the thing that was built, decisions documented so the reasoning survives the people, and a clear line for the quarter after PRISM steps back. The measure of the work is what runs without it.

Ongoing
Manager training, decision log

In their words

Erin worked closely with us to build the People structures and accountabilities that have allowed our firm to grow while not only preserving but strengthening the best of our culture. She helped us put scalable foundations in place, intentional hiring, onboarding, performance management, and clear expectations, so that everyone at every level knows our values and leverages them in key moments, even when no one is looking. Our culture has become a competitive advantage, which is a rare thing in the legal profession.

Rachel JohnsonCo-Managing Partner, J&O Law

Erin's partnership was instrumental to how Forever 21 grew our thinking about talent and HR. After significant changes had been made at the company, she stepped in as an interim HR leader to help unify the team and identify some of the most important hires we made that year, taking Forever 21 into it's most pivotal chapter.

Daniel KulleCEO, Forever 21

Erin is one of the rare few that can build a vision for the future while seemingly solving the day-to-day. We hired Erin to reset our corporate values, reshape culture and bring our leadership team to the next level. Each of these she delivered beyond any expectation and her work truly multiplied our business performance. Her quality of craft, care and drive is worth the investment out of the first session and already paying dividends before you complete. If you are seeking greater commitment, productivity and a high performing culture Erin and her process is the way.

Jordan SchenckCEO, Flashfood

For an early stage startup, working with Erin was a godsend as we approached the challenges of aligning our ambitions, our core values and our team's own individual goals. Her help setting up the structures for regular one-on-ones, training and performance reviews relieved a lot of stress during a challenging period of growing our company, building our product and raising seed capital.

Michael SmithCo-founder & CTO, Yvesblue

As a coach for CEOs, founders, and executive teams, I often refer Erin as an advisor for my clients' HR and People needs. She is one of my greatest resources and I fully trust her to guide my clients in the directions that are best for their teams' success.

Silvia ChristmannExecutive Coach

The practice

Erin H. Robertson,
on her own

Erin H. Robertson, duotone portrait — Erin H. Robertson

I've loved to work for as long as I can remember. My first job was at fourteen — not because I had to, but because I wanted the responsibility. Work has been the through-line of my life ever since, and the place where I've done my most growing.

My career has been one long, organic thread. Nearly seven years as an executive assistant at a grassroots nonprofit inside the United Nations system in New York — the hardest job I've ever had, and the one that shaped everything since. Then grant writing, then in-house fundraising, which is where I started working shoulder to shoulder with founders. When a fast-growing organization needed leadership it didn't yet have, I took on HR before I really knew what HR was, and found I had a knack for it. Founders started bringing me into their portfolio companies, and I saw it clearly: early-stage companies don't need full-time HR, but they do need it. So I started my own practice.

Along the way I spent time inside a law firm, building their HR practice and deepening my employment-law knowledge — they're still the partner I turn to when a client's matter needs real legal counsel. Twenty years in, I know what I'm here to do. I speak fluent founder. My comfort with the ambiguous is the same instinct that serves the boldest founders I work with. I know enough to be dangerous across every part of a business, and I have the right experts on hand for everything else.

I keep the work deliberately small in scope and senior in seniority. I take the brief, I do the work, and I'm in the room when it's explained. There is no bench and no account manager.

5 years · 100% client retention · 5 to 10X ROI

Grassroots nonprofit inside the UN system, NYC~7 years
SHRM-CP certifiedDec 2018
Everything DiSC practitionerApr 2026
Two engagements at a time.Current availability

How does a fractional engagement actually work?

A fixed number of days a month, the same days each month, anchored to the leadership team's calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal head of people would be.

A fixed number of days a month, scheduled around the partners' meeting and the review calendar. Between them, PRISM is reachable the way an internal director of talent would be.

What does it cost?

A monthly retainer with the scope written down, or a fixed price per project. No hourly billing, and the number is said out loud on the first call.

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Does PRISM replace our employment counsel?

No. PRISM builds the people practice — real legal matters go to counsel. Erin came up inside a law firm early in her career, deepening her own employment-law knowledge there, and that same firm remains the partner she refers real legal matters to today. PRISM knows exactly when a question has stopped being HR and started being theirs.

How quickly can the work start?

Usually within a few weeks, occasionally sooner for a sensitive matter. What is needed before day one is small: access to documents, and twenty minutes with each of four or five people.

What happens when it ends?

The handover is planned from the start: documentation, manager training, and a short advisory tail if it helps.

Who is actually doing the work?

Erin, and only Erin. If an engagement needs a specialist PRISM does not have, you will be told on the call, and introduced to one who does.

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What if we are not sure we need this yet?

Say so on the call. Some conversations end with a short note about what to fix internally and an open invitation to come back later.

hello@prismfirms.com

Start here

Let's talk about what's not working. The honest feedback starts immediately.

A twenty-minute conversation and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the company right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is. A twenty-minute conversation and a straight answer about whether PRISM is the right thing for the firm right now. If it is not, you will leave with the name of who is.

Book a 20-minute discovery call Back to the cover

CoverageRemote

Booking20-minute discovery call

Set inBodoni Moda and Space Grotesk