Our Team

Kirsti is the person who makes complex initiatives actually land. With a background in project management and operations, she translates strategy into structured, executable plans and keeps every moving part accountable from kickoff to completion. She holds stakeholders aligned, surfaces blockers early, and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks in the spaces between decision and delivery.

At OptimaHR, Kirsti provides the operational backbone across every client engagement. When the work is ambitious, she makes sure it gets done.

Amara brings senior HR leadership earned in some of the most operationally demanding environments there are. Her background spans hospitality and retail, including supporting organizations of over 300 employees and advising at the executive level on employee relations, performance, and organizational change. Years of working across varied teams and locations throughout Western Canada gave her something that cannot be taught: the ability to build trust quickly, navigate complexity calmly, and lead with both authority and warmth.

At OptimaHR, Amara helps organizations move from reactive people management to cultures grounded in clarity, trust, and long-term stability.

Shazia brings a depth of strategic HR experience across employee relations, policy development, performance management, and process improvement. She is known for sound judgment and for finding solutions that are both legally defensible and genuinely people-centred, a balance that is harder to strike than it sounds. Organizations trust her because she understands that compliance and culture are not in opposition. Done well, they reinforce each other.

At OptimaHR, Shazia helps organizations build structured, high-performing workplaces where people and process work together.

Dakota came to HR the way the best practitioners often do: through real experience leading people. Years of managing teams and daily operations in hospitality gave her an understanding of what employees actually need and what leaders are up against. She has since paired that lived knowledge with formal post-secondary training, bringing both perspectives to everything she does.

At OptimaHR, Dakota supports recruitment, onboarding, documentation, and the day-to-day coordination that keeps client HR running with consistency and care.