Camille Hyatt

My career path started in sales at Thomson Reuters, where I learned about account management, revenue flow, and the different personalities required for certain roles. After about four years, my director suggested I consider HR, but I resisted at first. I explored grad recruiting with the taxation department and found it interesting to learn about people, understand their goals, and match them to the right positions. When I was laid off in 2014, every career assessment told me HR was the field that would work best for my personality and skill set. I reluctantly took an HR trainer role at Catholic Charities, even though it meant a $15,000 pay cut. I told myself I'd go in, learn as much as I could, and pull all kinds of data points for myself. At the same time, I got a head coaching position at Princeton University because I'm scrappy and gritty and needed to supplement my income. Then a friend from cheerleading coaching connected me to Accolade, a healthcare tech company, which turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. I learned so much, got to cut my teeth on different projects, and understood the mechanics of a startup. COVID was the breaking point in my career where I realized I could impact people's actual lives, not just their day-to-day professional expectations. I love coaching people through the best and worst moments in their careers. After my mother passed away from cancer at 63, I made a promise to live to my fullest potential and do the things that scared me. That's when I started The Human Fluency, my HR consulting firm, because I wanted to help people who were dealing with uninformed and incompetent HR structures. I want to build a culture where people can feel safe to create, innovate, and grow.

The best career advice actually came from my time working at the cheerleading company when I was probably 19 or 20. We had a conversation about how you represent yourself, and the thing that has stuck with me is that all you have is your name, and how you show up is on you, and you teach people how to treat you. I have held onto that, and that has served me well in my career. People often ask me how I get away with what I get away with, and I always tell them don't do what I do, because I don't know if that's going to work for you. But what I do know is it works for me because I try to stay as true to myself as possible, even if I'm the person who is the outlier in a meeting or conversation. Whatever my point of view is or the expertise I'm sharing, I'm grounded in it, and I'm okay being the only voice in the room or the voice of opposition or disruptor. I constantly remind myself the only thing I have is my name, and I want whatever comes after that to be factual information about me and as positive as I can hope for it to be.

I would tell young women entering this industry to stay true to who they are, protect their reputation, and teach people how to treat them through the standards they set every day. There will be moments when being the lone principled voice is uncomfortable, but integrity, confidence, and consistency will ultimately define both your leadership and your legacy.

One of the biggest challenges in HR right now is navigating the lasting impact of COVID-era workplace shifts, including burnout, evolving employee expectations, and growing uncertainty around AI and the future of work. There is also an ongoing need for organizations to become more thoughtful and intentional in how they support frontline employees and build sustainable workplace cultures.

At the same time, the field presents enormous opportunities to create meaningful change in people’s lives through people-first leadership, better organizational design, and more flexible models like fractional HR consulting. HR leaders today have the ability to influence not just business outcomes, but the overall well-being, growth, and experience of the workforce.

I'm a big music person, so anytime I can get to a concert for an artist that I love, I go with my sister and my concert crew of friends. Something I learned in my early years at my last company was I didn't utilize my PTO and I worked like a dog, and when it's all over, it's over. So I was like, alright, I have to enjoy life. Outside of coaching, which I do enjoy and will call a hobby, I enjoy music, being at home, and spending time with my dog. I have a Boston Terrier, his name is Bronx, named after where I'm originally from. I'm starting to pick up gardening, I don't know what happened when I became this age, but now I have joy seeing the colorful flowers and doing projects like that. You gotta find the beauty in life these days. I love entertainment, I love a good time out with good people and good friends, going out and seeing the city. I love traveling. My last big trip was to Dubai, and it was an amazing trip. I planned for it and no expense was spared. I'm at the point where I'm staying home because I paid so much for this mortgage, I'm gonna enjoy this place, so I'm gonna make it my oasis.