A talent & growth advisory firm for the Intelligence Age.
LEADERS - FROM SERIES A TO IPO - RELY ON US TO RE-ENGINEER THEIR COMPANIES FOR PROFITABLE GROWTH.
At High Performance People, we partner with digitally powered businesses, brands, and the investors who back them.
We don’t just place leaders and their teams — we equip them with the tools, playbooks, and technology to forecast, simulate, and continually drive growth with precision.
Our talent model, Perform IQ, builds leadership that thrives in complexity — aligning culture, communication, and execution around measurable outcomes. We shape teams and operating rhythms so they move fast and stay resilient in high-pressure, high-growth environments.
Our growth platform, Forebrite, turns your sales, marketing, and performance data into foresight — showing you what’s driving ROI, where to spend next, and how to scale profitably. It lets leaders test scenarios, pressure-test strategy, and reallocate budget as signals change.
Our services can be dialled up, down or off as your priorities change:
Executive Search: our Perform IQ model identifies the top 5% of talent who can perform today & transform for tomorrow.
People-as-a-Service: our on-demand HR & Talent solutions are tailor-made to reduce overhead costs & fuel top line growth.
Growth-as-a-Service: our software & AI-powered platform maximises your marketing ROI & financial performance repeatedly.
Fractional Flying Squad: our scale-up experts bring temporary, targeted, high-growth expertise to your mission-critical projects.
Talent & Skill Development: our coaching, leadership & team workshops turn your people’s latent potential into goal achievement.
Talent to win, engine to fly.
Every S-curve.
We don’t do different, we are.
Founded in 2004 as an executive search & recruitment firm, we’ve placed the top 5% of talent into Australia’s and the world’s most innovative businesses and brands. Alongside CEOs, our focus is growth leaders: CMOs, CTOs, CROs, CPOs, and leaders across Product, Engineering, Data, AI/ML and Revenue Operations.
As the market matured, great hires alone were not enough. Clients needed outcomes. We built Perform IQ to shape leadership, culture and operating rhythm through coaching, masterclasses and high-performing team programs — so teams could move fast and stay resilient under pressure.
Then our clients asked for something more: clarity on what was working and what to do next. We then built Forebrite, our predictive marketing & financial forecasting engine, to turn sales, marketing and performance data into foresight — so growth leaders know what is working, what to change, and where to put the next dollar.
Today, we are not a recruitment company. We connect teams, systems and growth engines by bringing the right human expertise together with the best of data and technology.
Our vision is to make our clients’ growth predictable, profitable and repeatable by codifying what works and scaling it across teams, channels and markets.
Our areas of focus:
Digital Media, Sport & Entertainment
eCommerce, Marketplaces & Subscription Platforms
Brands & ConsumerTech
Software, Cloud & SaaS
Venture Capital & Private Equity
HealthTech & Life Sciences
FinTech
AI & Machine Learning
EdTech & Online Learning
Hospitality Tech & TravelTech
People-as-a-Service: Talent OS
Our People-as-a-Service gives you world-class HR and Talent expertise that is on-demand, flexible and overhead-free.
Whether you are building your first HR function, scaling L&D, or hiring for hyper-growth, we design solutions that fast-track your goals.
Our multi-disciplinary team brings depth and empathy. We have guided ventures from Series A to the Fortune 50 and led organisations of scale through award-winning transformation.
Our edge is Perform IQ: a behavioural-science and AI-powered toolkit that improves hiring quality, streamlines workflows and shapes high-performing leaders, teams and culture.
PaaS delivers exactly what you need, precisely when you need it. Check out our full e-brochure here.
Benefits include:
Economy: we run HR & Talent health checks to define objectives & design a proposal aligned to your budget.
Expertise: we connect you to top-tier HR & Talent experts who achieve measurable outcomes vs. box-ticking.
Strategy: we design flexible HR & Talent roadmaps you can scale up or down any time as your priorities shift.
Impact: we use AI-automation & Perform IQ insights to optimise your workflow, process & system efficiencies.
Support: we provide services incl. L&D, workplace law & WH&S compliance to strengthen your People function.
Growth-as-a-Service: Data OS
Growth-as-a-Service is centred on Forebrite, the predictive marketing & financial forecasting engine our clients asked us to build.
Your dedicated Co-Pilot runs it for you, connecting your data, maintaining the model, and driving the weekly budget moves.
Forebrite unifies marketing, sales and performance data into a complete picture of what drives growth and runs weekly execution loops that shift budget to what works.
Adaptive models forecast revenue, CLTV and CAC by channel, creative and audience so spend follows signal, not opinion.
The payoff is simpler decisions and stronger unit economics, with marketing ROI uplift of 40%+ and ARR increases in the double digits; explore our full e-brochure here.
Why it works:
Alignment: we unite functional leaders around your North Star Metric to ensure your revenue growth is profitable.
Foresight: we prioritise visibility into future market trends & customer behaviour to enable strategic adjustments.
Acceleration: we action insights in near-time so you can capitalise on market opportunities faster than your peers.
Scalability: we build-in annual planning, workshops & weekly reports to refine your model & optimise your strategy.
ROI: we track every $ of marketing spend from PR to performance media, identifying cross-channel opportunities.
Partnerships from Series A, ASX to Fortune 50:
Re:code data into profit, with Forebrite.
Who we are.
We are on a mission to cut our clients’ recruitment spend and reinvest it in the data, tools and technology that drive profitable growth.
Our client-centric model reduces agency reliance, speeds up hiring and raises performance, delivering a 100% placement rate and a 98% stick rate. Alongside our on-demand service, our market-leading digital innovation accelerates outcomes and reduces time to hire to 32 days, two to three times faster than industry norms.
In the face of the intelligence era, we built Forebrite to answer the question leaders face every week: are we moving EBITDA in the right direction? Adopted by e-commerce, marketplace and subscription platforms, SaaS and HealthTech clients, it goes beyond consulting and actually moves the numbers that matter.
Our incentives are aligned with yours. We cut per-hire fees by up to 50% and earn through outcomes; as your growth compounds, you need more of what we deliver. That’s why we underwrite recruitment work and turn those savings into measurable results.
We believe in levelling the playing field for founders, innovators and entrepreneurs, and we hold ourselves to that standard. The values our team commits to:
Daring to Disrupt: We challenge the status quo and seek groundbreaking solutions.
Courageous Innovation: We embrace bold ideas and conscientiously push boundaries.
Standing Up for Diversity: We champion inclusive environments and opportunities for all.
Valuing Progress Over Perfection: We prioritize building and flying our plane simultaneously.
Meet our creators.
James – Founder & Head of Talent
James Burke powers HPP’s evolution. He founded The Ladder in 2004, then boldly rebranded 10+ years on to expand the mission. He then co-created Perform IQ with PhD-level psychologists, blending performance science with predictive analytics, fine-tuning it into a series of masterclasses for scale-ups, PE/VC, and digital businesses.
Never one to sit still, James also devised and launched People-as-a-Service with Australia’s foremost HR leaders. Pushing further, he co-founded Growth-as-a-Service & Forebrite with Vlad, leaning into software and AI early on to help entrepreneurs, disruptors, and innovators pull their biggest growth levers. In his world, the power of new technology means he’s just getting started.
Off the tools, you’ll find him learning the art of renovation, enjoying a Guinness, working out, or flailing about in the water still trying to surf.
Sophie - Head of People Strategy
Sophie Needham anchors the centre of excellence behind our People Practice. Authentic and outcomes-driven, and a champion of the business case for DE&I, she’s our go-to for HR strategy, org design, and change initiatives, with a wealth of experience across tech, digital, media, and consulting.
Her superpower is turning ambiguity into actionable plans that deliver impact. A sharp communicator and hands-on operator, she has a knack for aligning people strategy to business goals, building high-performing teams, and lifting engagement across the full talent lifecycle through cleverly devised and beautifully executed initiatives.
A confidante to CEOs and exec teams, outside of work Sophie recharges with family, the outdoors, live music, and new dining finds.
Fay - Senior People Partner
Fay Theiss builds talent operating systems for innovation ventures, scale-up & PE portfolio companies, turning messy change into high-functioning teams and fit-for-purpose systems. A champion our PaaS offering, she expertly diagnoses where organisations get stuck so results land.
Her craft blends strategy and execution. Fay has stood up HR from scratch, hardwiring systems and operating rhythms through workforce planning, success profiles, performance frameworks, and manager coaching that turns expectations into habits. She’s also at home rolling out ATS/HRIS and analytics, architecting leadership and onboarding initiatives, and rebooting the employee experience end-to-end.
In possession of Brazilian, Italian and Australian passports, Fay is perhaps unsurprisingly a hybrid-work advocate, our self-appointed cultural ambassador and resident bon vivant.
Sam - Head of Client Strategy
Sam Yee is our Head of Client Strategy and leads HPP’s Fractional team. Her superpower is turning complexity into competitive advantage. With roots in data & analytics, market & customer research, sales & marketing, and digital product development, Sam turns signal into strategy and strategy into momentum.
Alongside her portfolio career and 15+ years in digital media, sport & entertainment, Sam has steered digital transformations, unlocked industry-defining product-led growth, and helped sports start-ups to reimagine the future. Disruptive technology industries like HR, health, education, and sports are her jam.
A trusted coach and mentor who sets crisp priorities and lands outcomes, Sam is known for her insatiable curiosity and contagious energy. The latter extends to being a true-blue Aussie and die-hard Sydney sports fan.
Vlad – Head of Growth
Vlad Mehakovic is the kind of growth strategist that founders and exec teams keep on speed dial. Part creative technologist, data analyst, innovator, and strategic marketer, he brings a particularly unique breadth & depth of experience from leadership roles that have spanned Series A through to the ASX 100.
A long-time ally of James, Vlad co-built Forebrite’s early prototypes with ventures like Laundromap, Providoor, MoleMap, MedView and Hanrob to crack product-market fit. He breaks down the barriers to scale by engineering winnable growth strategies and driving profitable revenue with a ruthless focus on outcomes.
A former CMO, CTO and CEO, he translates the impossibly technical stuff into instantly usable playbooks. Outside work he’s a health nut, devoted husband, and new dad of two. So yes, weekends are always fully booked.
Emma - Partner & Head of Operations
Emma Delory is our operations maestro and research specialist, the engine behind HPP’s day-to-day rhythm and growth infrastructure. She streamlines workflows, builds the systems that scale, and turns insight into sharp marketing and social content.
An early adopter, Emma leads our AI stack and has integrated ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gamma. A key player across People-as-a-Service and Growth-as-a-Service, she’s as comfortable interviewing candidates as she is crafting proposals and playbooks for new clients.
Multilingual with global experience in senior marketing and consulting, Emma has hired across continents and run large-scale growth workshops. Outside work she’s a wannabe yogi, fashion tragic, and devoted dog-lover with a healthy approach to food (weekends excluded).
Our latest thinking…
Articles
Growth Leadership: New Leadership for the Intelligence Age
Business leaders faced an all-time-high rate of change in 2024, spurred by rapid advancements in generative AI according to Accenture’s Pulse of Change index, and the pace will continue throughout 2025 and beyond.
40 Habits of Growth Leaders
Worst First: Start your day by tackling the most unpleasant task. Getting it out of the way early sets a productive tone for the rest of the day.
Peak Times: Figure out when you're most productive and schedule your important tasks during those times. Save less demanding tasks for your off-peak hours.
The Marketing Growth Engine: Supercharging Performance
We live in a time of abundant growth potential. However, the same proliferation of marketing channels, data and activities that create this growth potential can make it difficult to prioritise marketing budgets and efforts. Marketers are spoilt for choice and drowning in data. And that can be more crippling than enabling.
Enough about us, let’s talk about you.
Are you readying your business to thrive in an increasingly digital and interconnected world – or launching something new?
We appreciate hearing from our clients and network. If you would like to contact us to discuss any of our services, ask for career advice or to simply provide confidential feedback on your experience with our business, please send us a message.
Make an enquiry
Ways to get in touch
If you're not a forms-kinda-person, simply email us - hello@hppeople.com