Founder Interview With Lee Turner and Leslie Hensley, HENSLEE HR
Lee Turner and Leslie Hensley are the Co-Founders of HENSLEE, a boutique HR group known for its unique people-first approach. Utilizing over 25 years of collective experience, HENSLEE specializes in providing comprehensive people ops support for early-stage companies, offering strategic guidance and day-to-day support in areas such as payroll, benefits, onboarding, policy creation, and more.
During the interview, we learned about Lee and Leslie's journey to founding HENSLEE. Lee's background in tech and operations, combined with Leslie's expertise in people operations, inspired them to create a business focused on building inclusive and supportive workplaces. Their commitment to empowering employees and fostering authentic connections drives their mission to provide exceptional HR services to companies in need of support. Let’s jump right in!
Can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to where you are today?
Lee: I grew up in Florida and began working at my first tech company in the nineties. My boyfriend had started a website development company as well as a marketing company, and I worked there for about four years. This experience led me to San Francisco in the early 2000s and I stayed in tech for a while. From there, I bounced around from retail to restaurants, bars, and small businesses, always staying in an operational role.
Then I moved back to Knoxville, Tennessee, when my dad was falling ill. During this time, I worked at a nonprofit where I started to focus more on people operations. When I returned to San Francisco, I quickly re-entered the tech industry, laser-focused on people ops, culture, and development. My goal was to build a better workplace, with a strong emphasis on representation and employee experience. I spent almost a decade in tech, moving from startup to startup, which is where I met Leslie.
Two years ago, we decided to launch HENSLEE HR and now we are focused on a unique people-first approach, offering strategic people ops guidance and day-to-day support, positively impacting the companies we touch and their employees' experiences.
Leslie: I grew up in a tiny town in central Oregon. In my twenties, I spent about a decade in Seattle, and then moved to the Bay Area, where I've been for over 12 years. Most of my career has been in people operations. I started at Starbucks' corporate office in the legal department and then moved into HR and people ops, where I spent about eight years and grew in my HR career.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I wanted to gain experience working more directly with employees, so I worked at three different tech startups. I was often one of the first employees, helping these companies scale and grow. Being an early employee allowed me to impact and influence the development of culture, teams, and communities from the ground up.
I met Lee at my last in-house gig, and we immediately clicked. We shared the same values and vision for people operations—how to support and engage employees and the role we could play in an organization. After consulting on my own for about a year, Lee and I continued to chat, dreaming and scheming about what eventually became HENSLEE.
What inspired you to offer the services you provide?
Lee: My inspiration came from a deeply personal place. When my father fell ill in 2014, it brought up a lot of anxiety, depression, and mental wellness issues for me, which I had never experienced before. At that time, these topics were not widely discussed in the workplace. I was working at a small startup and luckily had a supportive manager who helped me navigate through this period. This experience made me realize the importance of normalizing conversations about health, wellness, and mental health in the workplace.
“I have always been drawn to people ops because I wanted to create a better work environment for myself and my colleagues. As an empath, I believe that companies should encourage their employees to show up as their authentic selves, fostering an inclusive and supportive culture. This leads to greater engagement and better productivity, creating a win-win situation for everyone.”
Leslie: My inspiration for wanting to start HENSLEE came to me while I was working on a performance review. A few managers and I pulled the team’s data, including compensation, and layered it with additional metrics like gender, race, and other demographics. Once we did that, we discovered significant pay disparities among employees from marginalized communities.
This led to a very direct and real conversation with the managers and the team about the current state of affairs. We discussed how to correct these disparities immediately and examined the origins of these inconsistencies. The goal was to understand how they came about and, more importantly, how to prevent them from happening again.
This exercise not only raised awareness but also highlighted the need for more visibility and transparency in compensation, not just during review cycles but also as new employees were brought into the organization. It made me realize the importance of equitable pay practices and the need to advocate for and implement these types of changes in the workplace.
What is one of the biggest challenges you have faced in your journey as a service provider, and what did you do to overcome this?
Lee: We're self-funded so everything we do, every dollar we spend, has to be thoughtful and intentional. We're also first-time business owners so a lot of what we built was brand new to us. We had to figure everything out as we went. What was super helpful in that process was leveraging professional networks. We joined groups that helped provide mentorship and advice when it came to decisions like pricing, branding, and business development. To this day, we continue to lean on our support groups and we're now able to provide support to others which feels great!
If you could give one piece of advice to future LGBTQ+ service providers within your field, what would it be?
Lee: Stay true to your values. One of the first things we did as a small team was establish our values. It was a collaborative process that resulted in four really strong and highly important pillars for our team. We reference these values in everything we do, both internally, and externally for clients and our community.
“If something doesn't align with our values we take time to question why not and whether we should continue down that path. As members of the LGBTQ+ community we have to live in our integrity.”
How does being openly queer inspire or impact your business?
Lee: Being openly queer is integral to our "People-first" approach. We aim to create inclusive, supportive spaces for all members of an organization by giving everyone a voice and encouraging them to live authentically. By setting an example ourselves, we help others see the value and importance of living freely.
A key value at HENSLEE is "make space and elevate," which is all about inclusion, diversity, and equity. One concrete way we implement this is by fostering an environment where everyone can give feedback, ask questions, and pursue development opportunities. Leslie and I, as managers and owners, make sure this space is available and encourage our employees and contractors to listen and elevate each other. Our hand motion for this value is "raising the roof," symbolizing our commitment to uplift everyone in our community.
Leslie: Adding to what Lee said, it's crucial to have open conversations without fear of judgment. For example, we had an employee ask us for more direct, in-the-moment communication. It was a difficult request for them to make, but we had an in-depth conversation about how we could better connect and ensure we both got the information we needed to move forward. Despite the initial discomfort, I left that conversation feeling incredibly encouraged. The depth of conversation we are able to have now is truly amazing and reflects our commitment to open communication and mutual support.
What brands or services by LGBTQ+ founders are your go-to's and why?
Lee: I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by incredible LGBTQ+ brands and services here in San Francisco. My husband and I default to supporting as many as possible including Brenda’s French Soul Food, Humphry Slocombe, Moby Dick, 440 Castro and Cliff's Variety.
Leslie: A few of my favorites include Verve Wellness Studio, The Queer Gym, Feelmore Adult & Social and Alchemy Collective Coffee Roasters.
Who is your favorite LGBTQ+ celebrity and why?
Lee: I'm an aspiring writer and David Sedaris is my role model. He's incredibly witty, self-deprecating, and honest. I find his work to be incredibly inspirational and empowering. It gives me strength to share my stories with the world.
Can you share one fun fact about yourself?
Lee: My spirit animal is a dolphin and I'm convinced I was one in a former life. :D