HR Leaders in Focus: A Conversation with Nathalie Rodriguez, Talent & People at Cambio.ai
👉Spotlighting HR executives who are shaping the future of work—part of CFW Careers’ commitment to excellence in retained executive search, global executive search, and professional coaching.
Welcome to our HR Leaders in Focus blog series, where we feature conversations with HR executives shaping the future of work. These leaders share strategies, lessons learned, and insights on the evolving role HR plays in driving organizational success across industries.
At CFW Careers, we bring together the expertise of global executive search and the personalized guidance of professional coaching. Our dual practice allows us to support organizations in building strong leadership teams while helping individual leaders navigate transitions and accelerate their growth.
Nathalie Rodriguez | HR @ Cambio.ai
Today, we’re talking with Nathalie Rodriguez, who is a 3x first-in-seat Founding Talent and HR Leader at Cambio.ai. Nathalie currently supports Cambio’s post series A growth, overseeing all things talent, hiring, and people ops.
Nathalie, in your experience, how has AI specifically helped make your HR efforts more effective, and where have you seen its limitations or risks?
I’ll answer this specific to the different aspects of a talent and people org. Here are the myriad ways in which we’ve utilized AI in our function:
Recruiting: I’m using AI for all the basics: JD’s, outreach campaigns, company sourcing lists, etc.
Feedback: Part of being an HR Leader at an organization is being a bit of a coach, to everyone. Framing feedback to be “more collaborative” has been something that I lean on AI to help generate, especially when time for thoughtfulness is limited.
Checklists: I’ve never had to own a due diligence process pre-chatGPT. I was able to quickly pull a checklist together, validate with legal, and carry on. Similarly, I was looking to revamp onboarding and offboarding, and I used AI to generate a checklist for both and made some small process changes.
Policies: At an early stage start up, especially when working with first time founders that have never had to think about bereavement leave policies, jury duty protocols, and parental leave policies, they always want to know what “other competitor companies are doing,” regardless of how many times the HR stakeholder has created and implemented these policies at other orgs. Instead of spending hours looking at vague career pages that list high level offers or asking “the HR Professionals slack groups,” I obtained a list of companies our founders feel are comparable and had chatGPT do all the digging and create comparison tables.
Contracts: There's a lot of offer letter verbiage, leave verbiage, etc., that I often leverage AI for in lieu of spending $500+ to email lawyers. Often these add-ons are fairly low stakes.
As a first-in-seat HR leader, what strategies have been most effective when working with founders and executive teams?
I’ll share a few strategies that have worked well for me:
The art of patience: Founders need the space to make mistakes; this will happen, especially with personnel decisions. And for as much as we flag and make sound recommendations, they may go another route. Part of the job is learning how to raise the right flags and get the right recommendations implemented, which takes time and finesse. Founders also tend to be naturally optimistic (in the best way). That optimism is what drives bold moves, wins game-changing customers, and creates jobs. But it can also clash with the pragmatism HR leaders bring. The challenge is to both embrace that optimism and continually level-set so the company stays grounded. And most importantly, the founder needs to come to the ‘you told me so’ on their own.
Data: Founders love data. Show them a dashboard, facts they can quantify, and the conversations become so much more productive.
Avoiding Burnout: First time founders tend to be cagey and might gate-keep a lot, unintentionally. You'll be chasing around for approvals, context, validation, decisions, etc. This gets frustrating especially when you are accountable for the outcomes but don't have the decision-making authority yet. Elevate yourself by focusing on small wins and finding ways to build trust. That can be as simple as catching a typo on a deck, sending an important reminder, focusing on an important task that's been on the back burner. Small wins give people something to celebrate, and accomplishments build momentum.
From your perspective, what do HR leaders need most from external search partners to ensure a successful hire at an early stage AI company?
External search firms often provide valuable perspective by helping internal leadership and recruiting teams understand how recruiting processes operate outside their organization. These engagements become both a learning opportunity and a calibration point for all involved.
The strongest partnerships go beyond sourcing talent; they bring data into the conversation and hold hiring teams accountable in ways that internal recruiters sometimes cannot, due to organizational dynamics or competing priorities. By introducing clear KPIs, external partners create discipline and structure that helps teams stay focused.
In my experience, searches conducted with external partners tend to take two to three times longer. This delay is often driven by internal factors: rescheduling interviews, rescoping the role mid-process, or adding new steps to the interview loop. A skilled external partner can counteract these tendencies by resetting expectations, reinforcing best practices, and anchoring the process around KPIs. In doing so, they not only improve accountability but also help reduce the overall time to hire.
What leadership lessons stand out most from your career—particularly those that may be overlooked or undervalued by others in HR?
Reporting directly to a founder or CEO provides a distinctive kind of growth. It may not always refine the technical aspects of your craft, but it equips you with invaluable skills, like managing up, exercising patience, communicating at a high level, and mastering a variety of frameworks. These lessons build muscles you might not have developed otherwise.
That said, the most transformative professional growth often comes from mentors who are also functional leaders. A seasoned CHRO, for example, can show you what “great” truly looks like in the discipline—offering the guidance, structure, and feedback that accelerates your development in ways a founder alone may not be able to.
For those considering first-in-seat roles or direct reporting lines to founders, it’s important to reflect on what kind of growth you’re seeking. Reporting to a founder or CEO isn’t always the golden ticket to your dream role; it’s a powerful opportunity that broadens you as a leader. But sometimes, it’s the dedicated mentorship of a career CHRO that provides the depth and craft development needed to truly rise.
How can people connect with you and learn more about your work?
nathalie@cambio.ai | Cambio AI | linkedin.com/in/nathalierodriguez1/
At CFW Careers, as a firm specializing in retained executive search, we know that placing the right leaders in the right roles creates impact that lasts well beyond the hire. This series reflects our commitment to spotlighting the voices of HR leaders who are advancing the profession and shaping workplaces of the future.