about
LED BY AN OPERATOR. BUILT TO SCALE.
Griffin Barnes Human Capital Partners was founded by Kristie Griffin, a talent executive with more than 25 years of experience building, scaling and leading talent functions across technology, healthcare and retail.
Most recently a senior talent executive at Guild, Kristie led the full talent ecosystem, from acquisition and internal mobility to leadership development, performance, succession and talent strategy, and architected the company's first AI-First Talent Strategy, Succession Planning & Leadership Continuity Framework and enterprise Talent Review. Before that, she led enterprise hiring as Group Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Ross Stores, a $19B Fortune 200 retailer. As Head of Talent Management & Strategy at Stanford Health Care, she designed the workforce plan for the opening of the new Stanford Hospital and later designed and led the organization's Distributed Workforce Strategy through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier leadership roles at Google, Microsoft, Dignity Health and Stryker gave her a front-row seat to how great companies build, and rebuild, the systems that attract, grow and keep their people.
A former Division I basketball player and team captain at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Kristie brings an athlete's mindset to every engagement: preparation, executional rigor, and the belief that developing people is the highest-leverage investment any organization can make. She lives in Northern California with her husband and their four children.
What we believe
your people strategy is your business strategy.
That's why every engagement starts with your business strategy and builds the people, leaders and systems to deliver it, designed to endure long after we hand them off.
the name
WHY GRIFFIN BARNES
griffin is my married name. barnes is the name i was born with.
The firm carries both: a reminder that the strongest organizations, like the strongest people, are built on where they come from and where they're going.
how we work
OUR VALUES
Authenticity
Straight talk, no jargon, no generic playbooks. We tell you what we see.
Accountability
We own outcomes, not just deliverables, and we measure what we build.
Performance
Built for execution: systems and habits that hold up under real pressure.
Purpose
People strategy anchored to what the business, and its people, are working toward.
our bench
SENIOR TALENT, ON CALL
Griffin Barnes brings together a vetted bench of senior HR practitioners: former executives and specialists from leading organizations. Each engagement is staffed with the right expertise for the work, led by Griffin Barnes, and held to one standard of quality.