Rachel Barton

Head of People Operations at ProphetX. I take care of the people side of building a company. That means making sure the systems, processes, and culture actually work for the humans using them, especially when things are moving fast.

Working at a startup is genuinely different, and it's worth being honest with yourself about whether you're ready for it. The pace is real, the ambiguity is real, and nobody is going to hand you a perfect playbook. Some people thrive in that and some people don't, and neither is wrong. But if you get energized by figuring things out as you go and taking real ownership of your work, you'll probably love it here.

And if you're early in your career, I just want to say: enjoy this part. Be curious, try things, ask the dumb question in the meeting. The best teams I've been a part of worked hard and laughed a lot, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Don't be in such a rush to have everything figured out. 

I've spent 12+ years in HR and People Ops across manufacturing, SaaS, and PE-backed environments. I've built functions from scratch, kept things running under pressure, and worked closely with leadership on the hard, real stuff. Org design, culture, employee relations, all of it. I love the operational side of this work. Good process, clean data, systems that actually hold. But I also believe people instincts matter, and that they get sharper the more you use them.

I wanted to be somewhere that takes operations seriously and genuinely cares about its people. ProphetX is building something new, and People Ops has a real seat at the table. That combination doesn't come along very often, and when it does, you say yes.

Just be yourself. Seriously. The rehearsed answers never land the way people hope, and honestly they aren't necessary. What I remember is people who show up curious and present, and who have a real question about the role or the team or where we're going. That goes a long way.