Pooja Samuel(She/her), Founder

Hi, hello! I’m Pooja, founder of Colere and a people and culture leader with over seven years of experience helping early-stage companies build thoughtful, people-first foundations for growth.

I work with growing companies that have hit the point where informal isn't cutting it anymore. Maybe people are asking questions you don't have good answers to yet. Maybe your managers are doing their best, but winging a lot of it. Maybe you're starting to realize you're one bad hire or one key person away from something breaking. That's usually when founders call me.

The throughline of my career has always been serving clients through relationship-building. It started in high school at an esthetics school, which, yes, is not the typical HR origin story. But that's where I learned that people remember how you make them feel, and that stuck. From there, I spent time helping grow a coworking space where the whole model was built around community. Same thread, different setting. Eventually, that led me into HR, and honestly, it just clicked; supporting employees felt like a natural extension of everything I'd already been doing.

Through Colere, I work with founders who want to build systems that are fair, functional, and real; a culture that shows up in how people treat each other, not just in a slide deck.

Outside of work, I'm usually eating something delicious (cooking it or finding it), at the gym, dancing in my kitchen to hip hop, or on the couch with my two orange cats and a 90s sitcom I've already seen four times.