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Available for remote and UAE-based roles
Lainey
Marindo
Senior HR Leader · Organisational Growth · People Strategy · Recruitment
Experience
People & Culture Leader
Bukhash Brothers | CHALK | #ABtalks
Jan 2019 – Apr 2026
HR Admin & Assistant Manager
My30Minutes EMS Studio, Dubai
2018 – 2019
Senior HR & Administrative Assistant
The Loft Fifth Avenue, Dubai
2015 – 2017
Executive Assistant
Creations Alexandre Miya Paris, Dubai
2014 – 2015
Communications & Product Trainer
Startek International Ltd, Philippines
2011 – 2014
What IDo
People strategy, performance, systems, and end-to-end recruitment — built for the way your business actually works.
01
Scope & Scale
- Sole senior People function across a multi-entity, founder-led group for seven years
- Grew the organisation from 10 to 95 employees across three connected entities
- Managed 200+ hires across the group, end to end
- Built and ran every people system with zero compliance penalties throughout tenure
- Operated the full People function without a Managing Director in place for sustained periods
- Worked across three entities simultaneously: a digital growth agency, a salon, and a media/podcast division
02
Recruitment & Talent Acquisition
- Led end-to-end recruitment: sourcing, shortlisting, interview coordination, interviewing, offer letters
- Managed high-volume hiring across multiple entities at the same time during rapid scaling periods
- Processed licenses, visas, and labour permits for every hire
- Designed and ran structured orientation programmes from offer stage through first weeks
- Built onboarding systems covering system access, documentation, and requirements gathering
- Personally interviewed and assessed candidates across creative, operational, and leadership roles
03
Workforce Planning & Budgeting
- Initiated and ran the organisation's first proactive annual workforce forecasting process
- Built a step-by-step forecasting methodology and trained department heads to use it
- Co-built company-wide P&L, budget, and headcount forecasts with the Director of Operations
- Advised leadership on hiring decisions against budget, sales targets, and business goals before roles were opened
- Identified the financial cost of reactive, unplanned hiring and presented it to ownership directly
04
Performance Management
- Designed and implemented a reformed, fully objective performance review system
- Built a 9-item scorecard to replace a subjective, feelings-based review process
- Introduced weighted 360-degree feedback tied directly to performance scores
- Built increment structures linking performance outcomes to specific salary increase bands
- Identified and corrected review practices that were enabling favouritism and unfair treatment
- Connected performance system design directly to attrition reduction
05
Operations Management
- Acted as interim manager for a 12+ person team across multiple periods, totalling over two years
- Ran full day-to-day operations: staff scheduling, procurement, client complaint resolution, sales oversight
- Took over an entity with chronic management turnover (3 to 4 managers lost in two years) and stabilised it into the most consistent unit in the group
- Identified high-potential internal talent, promoted from within, and personally trained them into management
- Continued providing structural and administrative support to a newly promoted manager post-handover
- Managed the full operational and people function of a service business with no formal manager in place for over a year combined
06
Employee Relations & Culture
- Managed culture and fairness challenges in teams shaped by ownership favouritism
- Diagnosed the real drivers behind repeated attrition spikes: subjective reviews, reduced benefits, eliminated bonuses, leadership conduct
- Acted as the informal advisory point for early-career managers (ages 25 to 28) navigating real, unscripted team problems without any formal management training
- Helped first-time managers find clarity and the language to handle difficult conversations they were avoiding
- Identified the link between leadership communication style and team trust, accountability, and willingness to escalate problems early
07
Organisational Diagnosis & Advisory
- Diagnosed recurring structural failure patterns across multiple business units over a multi-year period
- Identified and named the link between under-investment in training, junior-heavy hiring, and declining client retention
- Advised ownership directly on the long-term cost of reactive hiring versus strategic workforce planning
- Surfaced root-cause issues — leadership disengagement, inconsistent decision-making, lack of forecasting — that were driving symptoms typically misread as "HR problems"
- Built the case, with data and real examples, for structural change that ownership chose not to act on, and tracked the resulting cost over time
08
Core Skills
- Strategic workforce planning and forecasting
- Performance management system design
- Organisational diagnosis and root-cause problem-solving
- UAE labour law, visa, and compliance administration
- High-volume recruitment and onboarding system design
- Budgeting and P&L collaboration
- Interim operations and team leadership under pressure
- Internal talent identification, promotion, and management development
- Founder and ownership stakeholder management in high-friction environments
- Culture and employee relations management across multi-entity, founder-led structures
Case Studies
Digital Agency
Bukhash Brothers
- Built HR from scratch
- Scaled from 12 to 49 people
- Turnover: 27% to 9%
- Full systems implementation
Salon Chain
CHALK Gents & Ladies
- Scaled from 0 to 45 people
- High-volume service recruitment
- Compliance and labour law
- Retention systems for salon staff
Podcast & Production
#ABtalks
- 16-person creative team
- Media and content hiring
- Culture for a creative workforce
- Performance in a non-corporate space
Recruitment
What I've hired for
- Creative, digital, and marketing roles
- Operations and project management
- Sales, client services, and account management
- Content, production, and media
- Salon, aesthetics, and service roles
- HR, admin, and executive support
- Senior leadership and specialist hires
How I work
- Job design and competency profiling
- Multi-channel sourcing — LinkedIn, referrals, agencies
- Structured interviews and assessment design
- Offer negotiation and candidate management
- Onboarding design and first-90-day integration
- Employer branding and candidate experience
- Remote and cross-border hiring
Over 130 hires led across three distinct business entities simultaneously — digital agency, salon chain, and media production. Every hire handled in-house, without an agency.
Open To
Roles
Head of People · HR Director · Senior HRBP
Location
Dubai-based · Open to remote globally
Company size
50 to 200 people · Growth stage
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