Two founders who've spent their careers in the rooms where transformation actually happens — not the boardroom, but the breakroom.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold — treating the breakage as part of the object's history rather than something to hide. The result is stronger and more beautiful than the original.
That's how we see organizational transformation. The friction, the fear, the misalignment — these aren't problems to paper over. They're the seams where real change happens. We help organizations repair those fractures with something durable, turning the messy middle into lasting capability.
John has spent 25 years inside the leadership layer — the place where workforce strategy gets decided and where, too often, the distance between that decision and the people expected to carry it out goes unmeasured. With a Master's in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and a career spanning 2,000-person tech companies and publicly traded organizations, he brings both the research foundation and the scar tissue to know the difference between a workforce strategy that looks right in a steering committee and one that actually holds.
He's led technology-driven workforce transformations from the inside — including multiple enterprise system implementations where adoption, not configuration, was the hard part. At Kinsugi, he works from the leadership layer down, while Ben works from the people up. That's not a division of labor. It's the whole model.
Ben spent his career in one of the most human-intensive operating environments there is. Hospitality doesn't forgive the gap between how a system is designed and how people actually use it — every service, every shift, that gap shows up in real time. As a founding principal at Southern Independent Hospitality and culture architect behind Uchi Restaurant Group's expansion, he built cultures that performed under pressure and operational systems where human behavior and process design had to work together, or they didn't work at all.
That's precisely the problem Kinsugi solves. While John works from the leadership layer down, Ben works from the people doing the work up — and the firms that solve the hardest problems do both. The diversity of perspective isn't incidental; it's the method.
25+ years in HRBP, HR Operations, and Centers of Excellence across energy, technology, and education. She's worked nearly every corner of HR, with a consistent focus on employee and leadership development, voice-of-the-customer feedback, and process optimization.
Michelle focuses on how workforce decisions land on the people who have to live with them. She's built leadership development programs with 85%+ participation. Her approach is candor and active listening — truth builds trust, and both are required for change to hold.
20+ years in executive advisory, internal communications, and change leadership at global tech companies. Former Head of Corporate Communications and Employee Engagement at Cirrus Logic, with senior communications roles at Expedia and BMC Software.
Jen has spent her career in the gap between what leaders decide and what employees actually hear — that's where change takes hold or stalls. She's built communication functions from scratch, led large-scale change efforts, and coached leaders to communicate better themselves. Her core belief: strong relationships build the trust that makes transformation last.
26 years in the people function, including roles as Chief People Officer. Her work starts from a simple premise: transformation starts with people.
Mindy advises, coaches, and facilitates to help organizations realign people, process, and technology into a workplace where humans can do their best work.
30+ years in HR leadership and enterprise SaaS. Founder and CEO of MeBeBot, an AI platform built to improve the employee experience and operational efficiency. Her work has earned Digital Transformation Leader of the Year (Women in Cloud), Austin InnoBeat's Company to Watch, a SHRM Better Workplaces Cup finalist spot, and 5-star reviews on G2 and SelectSoftware for AI chatbot and agent solutions.
Based in Austin, TX, Beth evangelizes responsible, ethical AI — with a conviction that technology should make work more meaningful, not less human.
We assume we don't know until we listen. Every engagement starts with questions, not answers.
We say what we see, even when it's uncomfortable. Especially when it's uncomfortable.
We trust our expertise without claiming to have all the answers. Your context matters more than our frameworks.
Data informs. Instinct guides. The best decisions come from both.
Progress over perfection. We'd rather build something that works and improve it than plan something perfect that never ships.