Fractional Head of People
01Two days a week, embedded with the founders. Sarah owns the People function end-to-end — handbook, hiring loops, comp bands, performance — until you’re ready to hire your own VP.
Learn More →Fractional People Operations
Your First HR Program. Quietly Built. Cleanly Run.
Sarah is an ex-VP-of-People turned fractional Head of People who helps Series Seed–B founders build a real HR program — compliance, handbook, onboarding, performance — with every step tracked in a private founder portal.
40+
Startups Served
6 states
Multi-state Compliance
12 yrs
In-house People Ops
SHRM
-SCP · #SP-2017-4421
Meet Sarah
“Building your first HR program shouldn’t feel like waiting for a lawsuit to teach you the rules. I write the handbook with you, hire the first People Ops manager beside you, and stay on call when the messy human stuff lands at 11pm. That’s the whole job.”
Sarah Okafor, SHRM-SCP
Fractional Head of People · Meridian People Partners · Serving founders since 2022
How I Can Help
Built Around Series Seed–B Founders
People Audit & Compliance
02A 4-week sprint to find out where you stand. Classification audit, multi-state setup, I-9 cleanup, payroll review, and a written remediation plan you can hand to your CFO.
Learn More →Handbook & Onboarding Build
03Six weeks. You leave with a real handbook, a 30/60/90 onboarding template, and a day-1 packet your next ten hires will actually read — without the boilerplate that makes engineers cringe.
Learn More →Why It Matters
A People Lead Who Reads the Statute Before You Ask
Before going fractional, Sarah spent twelve years inside high-growth tech — from People Ops at Stripe to VP People at a Series A startup that 5x’d headcount in eighteen months. That background shows up in the way she runs a comp committee, drafts a leveling matrix, and writes policies that actually hold up in front of an EDD examiner.
MPP
Founder Stories
“Sarah walked us through our first multi-state hire line by line. We went from improvising in Notion to running an actual program. By month three she was flagging classification risks faster than our employment counsel.”Aditya R. & Linnea H. · Vector Labs
Ready to Hire Your First People Lead?
Building a real People function is a long process. Let’s start with a 30-minute call about where you actually are.
Book a Free Intro Call