Nicole McCarter

Nicole McCarter has spent 17 years in human resources, beginning her career at a restaurant group called Rossbeigh where she walked into a blank slate with no HR department, handbook, or systems in place. Over 13 to 14 years, she built the department from the ground up across two cities and more than 100 employees, managing recruiting, talent acquisition, onboarding, orientation, payroll, benefits, employee relations, and a multi-location handbook while also learning to teach workplace safety training and read a P&L to cut labor costs by nearly 20 percent. She later transitioned to high-volume retail, where she ranked in the top percentage of performance for four years running by consistently handling the metrics, pace, and onboarding of numerous employees each week. Throughout her career, Nicole has hired over a thousand people, carrying the responsibility of decisions that impact families, rent, and life chapters. She fortified her on-the-job learning, often described as the school of hard knocks, with a PHR certificate that increased her confidence. Nicole attributes her success to her will to succeed, having come from a family without that drive and choosing to forge an opposite path for herself.