Talent Strategy Practice Group
Turn Your Workforce Into a Growth Engine
At 2GO Advisory Group, we know that whatever the business moment, whether growth, transformation, or volatility, your people determine whether the company gains momentum or loses ground. Our Talent Strategy Practice helps organizations turn their workforce into a growth engine that performs in any market: scaling up when opportunities surge, stabilizing without stalling when budgets tighten, and building the leadership and capability needed for what comes next.
As fractional Talent Strategy leaders, we partner with CEOs, CFOs, founders, and boards to align talent with business priorities, close capability gaps, and create workforce strategies that deliver measurable results. Unlike traditional HR support, we focus on the full HERO spectrum, Hire, Engage, Retain, and Optimize, so every talent decision drives ROI, preserves culture, and builds long-term resilience.
How We Help
Talent as a Strategic Lever, Not a Line Item
The Talent Strategy Practice, part of 2GO Advisory Group's CHROs2Go division, brings senior workforce expertise to founder-led companies, scaling organizations, and established businesses navigating major shifts. We treat talent as a lever, not a cost center, pairing tactical execution with strategic thinking so every people decision drives a measurable business result. Every engagement starts with the same questions: what is the business trying to achieve, what people decisions will accelerate or block that outcome, and what evidence will tell us we are succeeding.
Workforce planning aligned to business strategy
We help CEOs, CFOs, and boards define the right people strategy to deliver on revenue, growth, and transformation goals, building plans that flex with the business.
Hiring playbooks and recruiting infrastructure
We design interview rigor, scorecards, and recruiting workflows that improve time-to-hire and candidate fit, often in partnership with Talent2Go for execution.
Succession planning and leadership development
We map mission-critical roles, identify successors, and accelerate readiness through individualized development plans for executives and emerging leaders.
Reskilling, redeployment, and internal mobility
We maximize the value of your existing workforce by designing upskilling pathways, redeploying talent to close critical gaps, and building internal mobility frameworks that keep top performers engaged.
Retention strategy and engagement design
We diagnose attrition patterns and design compensation, recognition, and career paths that keep top talent committed during growth and through volatility.
Organizational design and performance management
We redesign org structures, spans of control, and performance systems to remove friction, clarify accountability, and align teams with strategy.
Capabilities
The HERO Framework: Hire, Engage, Retain, Optimize
Hire
Workforce planning aligned to business goals and growth scenarios
Hiring playbooks, interview scorecards, and decision rigor
Time-to-hire reduction without compromising candidate fit
Recruiting infrastructure design for scaling teams
Talent intelligence, market mapping, and compensation benchmarking
Retain
• Retention diagnostics, exit pattern analysis, and early warning signals
• Compensation, recognition, and total rewards design
• Career pathing and internal mobility programs
• Reskilling and redeployment to reduce or avoid layoffs
• Employee value proposition and employer brand work
Engage
Workforce planning aligned to business goals and growth scenarios
Hiring playbooks, interview scorecards, and decision rigor
Time-to-hire reduction without compromising candidate fit
Recruiting infrastructure design for scaling teams
Talent intelligence, market mapping, and compensation benchmarking
Optimize
• Talent reviews, high-potential identification, and succession planning
• Leadership pipeline design and bench-strength assessment
• Performance management redesign and KPI alignment
• Organizational design and span-of-control optimization
• HR technology selection, implementation, and process integration
• M&A people due diligence and post-merger integration
How We Help
Two of our most requested engagements deliver measurable, compounding value. Succession Planning and Leadership Development builds the bench your organization needs for the future, while Reskilling, Redeployment, and Internal Mobility maximizes the workforce you already have. Both can be engaged standalone or as part of a broader Talent Strategy program.
Succession Planning and Leadership Development
We partner with organizations that want to build a strong leadership bench and ensure continuity in critical roles, while developing the next generation of leaders across both technical and management career paths. Our work takes two forms:
Helping executives and emerging leaders strengthen their leadership competencies and readiness for future roles
Designing structured succession planning processes that identify, prepare, and position internal talent to step up when needed
Benefits of a deliberate approach to developing leaders and preparing successors include:
Continuity in leadership during times of transition or growth
Stronger retention of high-potential employees
Increased bench strength to support expansion or innovation
Improved decision-making and strategic alignment at all levels
Greater confidence from investors, boards, and employees in leadership stability
A culture of growth and opportunity that boosts engagement
Our approach:
We work with clients to map out mission-critical roles, identify successors, and close readiness gaps through individualized development plans. Our process starts by understanding the organization's strategy and future talent needs. Using assessments, leadership evaluations, and internal input, we build profiles for successors and leaders-in-waiting, then create actionable development plans to accelerate their readiness.
Whether your goal is to protect against sudden leadership departures, prepare high-potential talent for the next level, or avoid costly external searches, our advisors ensure your succession plans are practical, dynamic, and deeply integrated with your business priorities. A typical engagement lasts 3 to 6 months, during which we work alongside HR, executives, and managers to create succession maps, development programs, and the tools needed to keep those plans current as your company grows.
Reskilling, Redeployment, and Internal Mobility
Our advisors work with organizations looking to maximize the value of their existing workforce by helping employees adapt, grow, and move into roles where they can make the greatest impact. This work centers on three interconnected strategies:
Reskilling employees for evolving business needs
Redeploying talent to fill critical gaps
Building internal mobility systems so employees see a future inside the organization, not outside it
Companies that invest in helping their employees grow and pivot gain measurable benefits, including:
Reduced reliance on expensive external hiring
Retention of institutional knowledge and top performers
Faster time-to-fill for critical roles
Improved morale and engagement by showing clear career pathways
Ability to pivot workforce capabilities during market or organizational shifts
tronger reputation as an employer who invests in its people
Our approach:
We help clients assess skills gaps and workforce needs through talent reviews, data analysis, and leadership input. From there, we design pathways for employees to upskill or reskill, including curated learning, stretch assignments, mentoring, and cross-functional projects. We also build internal mobility frameworks so employees understand how they can progress, and leaders can quickly identify who is ready for a new challenge.
A typical engagement spans 6 months or more and can include the design of career architecture, upskilling programs, and internal talent marketplaces that make it easy for employees to find growth opportunities inside the company. By aligning talent capabilities with business priorities, our approach ensures that organizations can adapt and thrive without losing their best people.
Who We Serve
Fast-growing startups
For companies past 25 employees where talent infrastructure has not caught up with headcount, we build the scalable foundations: hiring playbooks, performance systems, and leadership benches that grow with the business.
Scaling and PE-backed companies
For mid-market and PE-backed companies navigating M&A, international expansion, or rapid headcount growth, we provide the workforce planning, integration support, and talent retention strategies that protect deal value and accelerate post-close results.
Family-owned and founder-led businesses
For family-owned and founder-led businesses preparing for generational transitions, sales, or professionalization, we structure succession plans, leadership pipelines, and people governance that protect long-term value.
Established enterprises in transition
For established organizations adapting to market shifts, talent shortages, or major transformations, we bring fresh strategy and proven systems to refresh hiring, engagement, and leadership pipelines without disrupting operations.
CEOs, CFOs, founders, and boards
At every size and stage, our typical engagement starts with a senior leader who needs an experienced partner to design and execute the workforce strategy that turns talent into a measurable growth engine.
Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations
For nonprofits balancing impact with budget realities, we design talent strategies that preserve mission, develop emerging leaders, and build the operational scaffolding that lets growth happen sustainably.
Meet the Team
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Lisa Bell-Stewart
Talent Strategy Practice Leader
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Donna Hamlin
Talent Stratgy Practice Group Member
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Leesa Meintzer
Director of Recruiting Operations
Build a High Performing Team
Whether your business is growing, transforming, or in need of change, finding the right people quickly is critical. Our recruiting services give you direct access to experienced recruiters and advisors who understand your industry, your challenges, and the kind of talent it takes to move your business forward. Whether you're filling a key executive role, backfilling staff during a transition, or building out a new team, you’ll get tailored recruiting support without the overhead of a traditional search firm.
You choose the model that fits: executive search, contingency recruiting, or interim and project-based staffing. Every search is grounded in deep operational knowledge from across the 2GO Advisory Group—so you’re not just hiring quickly, you're hiring wisely.
Real Outcomes from Real Engagements
Engagement Example:
Scale Without Systems
Situation: A growing renewable energy company with approximately 125 employees was scaling fast with fragile, duct-tape talent infrastructure. The team needed visibility, velocity, and reporting discipline before the next round of growth.
Approach: We led a talent review, then reconfigured workflows, tools, and reporting cadences for scale and visibility.
Outcome: Time-to-hire cut by about 10 days on average. Twelve planned new hires were backfilled through internal promotions, saving more than $100,000 in year-one staff and recruiting costs. Hiring elevated from a scrappy workaround to a strategic engine for scale.
Engagement Example
Talent Waste and Whiplash
Situation: A large technology and manufacturing company with tens of thousands of employees was stuck in a costly cycle of annual 5% layoffs that eroded trust, burned cash, and created internal turmoil.
Approach: We built a reskilling and redeployment ecosystem, integrating process design, technology, and change management.
Outcome: Early adoption exceeded targets by 25%. Layoffs were avoided. Year-one savings reached $10 million. The result was a re-engineered way to move talent throughout the organization that withstood broader economic disruption.
Engagement Example:
Mission Risk
Situation: A small nonprofit needed to grow but lacked a hiring playbook, performance structure, or cultural scaffolding. Its leadership team was filled with inspiring dreamers but inexperienced people managers.
Approach: We coached the leadership team on hiring, performance, and retention, and built an operations roadmap that wove together culture, onboarding, and accountability.
Outcome: For the first time, the organization's seasonal program launched in under one week, saving 10 person-days and the equivalent of 5% of annual revenue. The organization gained scalable infrastructure that preserved its mission while giving leadership the tools to grow responsibly.
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The Talent Strategy Practice Group is a specialized practice within 2GO Advisory Group's CHROs2Go division. We provide fractional and interim talent strategy leadership to CEOs, CFOs, founders, and boards. Unlike traditional HR support, we focus on aligning workforce decisions with business outcomes through the full HERO lifecycle: Hire, Engage, Retain, and Optimize. Our goal is to help organizations turn talent into a measurable growth engine rather than a reactive line item.
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Traditional HR consulting focuses on operational execution: policies, compliance, transactions, and individual processes. Talent Strategy starts with business strategy and works backwards. We ask what the business is trying to achieve, what people decisions will accelerate or block that outcome, and what evidence will tell us we are succeeding. Every recommendation is tied to a measurable business result, whether that is faster time-to-hire, lower attrition, stronger leadership pipelines, or avoided layoffs.
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HERO stands for Hire, Engage, Retain, and Optimize. It is the integrated lifecycle we use to assess and improve workforce strategy. Hire focuses on workforce planning, hiring playbooks, and recruiting infrastructure. Engage covers leadership development, culture, and onboarding. Retain addresses compensation, career paths, and reskilling. Optimize includes talent reviews, succession planning, organizational design, and HR technology. Every engagement is grounded in the HERO areas most relevant to the client's business priorities.
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Our typical clients are CEOs, CFOs, founders, and board members at fast-growing startups with 25 or more employees, scaling companies navigating M&A or international expansion, established organizations adapting to major change, nonprofits balancing mission with budget, and PE-backed or family-owned businesses preparing for transactions or succession. We work with leaders who know their people strategy needs more rigor than their current HR function can deliver.
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Common trigger events include rapid scaling where infrastructure is breaking, persistent turnover or hire-fire cycles, investor or board concerns about leadership gaps or culture, leadership transitions or succession planning, M&A and post-merger integration, layoffs or workforce restructuring, and HR functions that are stretched thin and need senior strategic support without a full-time hire. If business plans depend on people decisions and the current team lacks the bandwidth or experience, that is the right moment.
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Talent Strategy is a specialized practice within the CHROs2Go division. CHROs2Go provides full fractional Chief Human Resources Officer leadership, while Talent Strategy focuses specifically on workforce design, hiring strategy, retention, leadership pipelines, and the HERO lifecycle. The two practices often work together, with CHROs2Go providing broad HR executive coverage and Talent Strategy bringing deeper specialization on the workforce and capability questions that drive business performance.
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Yes. Reorganizations, M&A, and workforce reductions are among the highest-stakes moments for talent strategy. We support M&A people due diligence and post-merger integration, organizational redesign, leadership pipeline planning during transitions, reskilling and redeployment programs that reduce or avoid layoffs, and communication and change management strategies that preserve trust and culture through major change.
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2GO Advisory Group typically deploys fractional Talent Strategy support within two to four weeks, and often faster for urgent situations. Our practice team has the bench strength and operational experience to move quickly, with a clear scoping process that aligns priorities, expected outcomes, and timeline before work begins. For ongoing engagements, we scope time and scope to flex with your business as it evolves.
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Yes. While 2GO Advisory Group is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with strong regional coverage in Northern California, the Talent Strategy practice serves clients across the United States and internationally. Lisa Bell-Stewart's background includes leading global talent functions for multinational organizations, and our network supports clients wherever they operate.
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Yes. Succession planning and leadership development is one of our signature engagements. We help organizations map mission-critical roles, identify successors, build leadership competencies, and close readiness gaps through individualized development plans. A typical engagement runs 3 to 6 months and delivers succession maps, development programs, and the tools to keep those plans current as the business grows.
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Yes. Reskilling, redeployment, and internal mobility is another signature engagement. We assess skills gaps and workforce needs, then design upskilling pathways, stretch assignments, mentoring programs, and internal talent marketplaces that let employees grow inside the organization. A typical engagement spans 6 months or more and helps companies reduce external hiring costs, retain institutional knowledge, and adapt workforce capabilities during market shifts.
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Talent Strategy sits within the CHROs2Go division and works in close coordination with Talent2Go, 2GO Advisory Group's recruiting practice. Talent Strategy designs the workforce plan and capability roadmap, CHROs2Go provides senior HR leadership to execute, and Talent2Go delivers the recruiting that brings the plan to life. Clients get strategic depth, executive bench strength, and recruiting capability under one coordinated partnership.