Joanna Newham

Joanna brings combined experience spanning over 30 years, as a Senior HR Generalist and as the founder of her own business. She is a highly regarded, trusted and approachable HR professional, with a background spanning professional services, national and global law firms, commercial advisory, and small to mid-size owner-operator businesses, including business partnering, employee relations, talent management, early careers and large-scale change, such as leading people through office mergers, acquisitions and private equity transactions.

Alongside her HR career, Joanna founded and grew an award-winning business from the ground up, building it over 15 years through to a successful acquisition. This experience, building something real, managing the people and pressures behind it, and seeing it through to a sale, shapes the way she partners with founders and leadership teams today: approachable, authentic, practical, hands-on, and genuinely invested in the outcome. Even when the outcome changes along the way.

The People Partner was built on a simple idea. Accessible HR expertise shouldn't mean a full-time hire, elevated consultancy fees, unrealistic retainers, or advice not aligned. Whatever the size or stage of your business, support should scale with you, not the other way around.

Joanna leads a team of People Partners, each specialising in a different corner of people management. Whatever the challenge, there's a specialist on the team who's already solved it. Together, they bring the full breadth of HR expertise to every engagement, without the overhead of a full-time team.