"I have had the privilege of working closely with Annie Marhefka as our dedicated HR consultant on a monthly basis for the past six months. Her consistent support and expertise have been instrumental in optimizing our HR processes and driving our organization to meet compliance standards.
Annie is more than just an HR consultant; she has served as a strategic partner who understands our business. Her ability to assess our evolving needs and provide tailored HR solutions has been invaluable. Whether it’s crafting HR policies, resolving employee issues, or enhancing our recruitment strategies, Annie has consistently delivered exceptional results.
What truly sets Annie apart is her commitment and care for our company’s growth and success. She takes the time to understand our culture and values, ensuring that HR initiatives align with our overall objectives. Her responsiveness and dedication to meeting our monthly deadlines have made her an excellent consultant to our team.
Annie’s deep expertise, unwavering professionalism, and ability to form strong partnerships makes her a reliable asset for continued HR excellence."
Judy Perez
CEO & Founder, iLearn Collaborative
"Annie Marhefka is an exceedingly talented human resource executive who combines a gift for connecting and understanding people, with a strong operational and business focus. At Connections Academy (now Pearson Online and Blended Learning) Annie worked with me to grow an early stage start-up with less than 100 employees into a market leader with over 4,000 employees. Annie was a key member of the executive team and was my partner around organizational design, talent development, change management, employee engagement and communications, and risk management. She developed our very first employee handbooks, set up processes for recruiting and onboarding, developed our performance management system, managed benefits and payroll and much more. She is acutely aware of what companies need during various stages of growth and has led and evolved a HR function though periods of hyper growth. Annie deeply understands the relationship between human capital and successful growth and I am confident that any CEO would benefit from having Annie as a trusted advisor and partner in solving challenges and seizing opportunities."
Steven Guttentag
CEO, EPS School Specialty; Former CEO Reading Plus; Former CEO and Co-Founder, Connections Academy
"My edtech company’s co-founders and I were profoundly fortunate to have Annie Marhefka’s genius and grit with us each step along the way, as we grew from scrappy startup to acquisition target to e-learning industry leader. Annie crafted all of our talent systems, including the highly specialized and regulated ones that allowed us to deploy thousands of K-12 teachers across the country. She built and evolved the teams we needed to grow, and pivoted seamlessly to focus on big-company systems when the moment was right. She pioneered meaningful culture initiatives before culture was cool. And just when I thought I couldn’t be further surprised by Annie’s adaptable smarts, she stepped up to work with the architects to plan our cutting-edge company headquarters. Annie is living proof that “human resources” not only evolves with the changing world of work, but can and should --with the right leadership -- drive that evolution."
Mickey Revenaugh
Ed Tech Innovator, Former EVP and Co-Founder, Connections Academy and VP, Business Development, Pearson
"Annie has extensive experience providing strategic oversight to organizations on employee relations matters as well as working with organizations to establish business practices and compliance measures that mitigate risks to the business. She tackles HR challenges with a creative, problem-solving approach that keeps the organization's culture and business objectives in the forefront. Organizational leaders would benefit greatly from her partnership and expertise."
Stefan Marculewicz
Attorney; Shareholder, Littler Mendelson
"I worked with Annie at Connections Education where we experienced double-digit revenue and margin growth for over a decade. When you’re growing as fast as we did, you want Annie overseeing HR. She’s a compassionate leader who keeps the organization’s business interests at the forefront while simultaneously ensuring that employees are given the support and priority they deserve. Our organization was well known for its culture, even long after we were acquired into a significantly larger business. Our culture was created and fostered due to Annie’s influence, and she spearheaded countless efforts that ultimately led to an extremely happy workforce with significantly above average tenure.
Ultimately, Annie’s role grew to include many other operational departments, including fulfillment and tech support. Combined with her savvy business focus, her ability to help employees individually flourish led to her departments’ success. It would be my honor and privilege to work with Annie again. If you have the opportunity to benefit from her guidance, your organization will benefit greatly the way ours did."
Monte Kalisch
Head of Product Technology at EPS School Specialty; Former Director of Technology Strategy & Development, The Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education; Former CTO, Connections Education
"Annie has worked with us for nearly three years now, and as the Executive Director of a "Small but Mighty" nonprofit in Baltimore, we were woefully behind in basic human resources, a significant risk to our Center. Annie created our employee handbook; the design, implementation and training around our compensation model; and guidance on employee relations matters. The results were of great impact. Even though we have existed since 1963, we are now a renewed organization having the confidence and credibility to make good decisions that are respected by the staff and community. Her impact can be quantified: We went from 9 employees to 30, a physical building expansion to triple the size with a solid HR plan, and annual budget increases of over 200%. The professionalism, knowledge, insight, and dedication Annie provided to us was incredible and we will be forever thankful."
Christi Green
Executive Director, Maryland Coalition of Families; Former Executive Director, St. Francis Neighborhood Center
"I had the pleasure of working with Annie for almost 13 years. During most of that time, she reported to me in the role of VP of Human Resources. As the CFO and COO of a high growth company where our employee count went from 100 employees working in a handful of states to over 4,000 employees in 35 states, I counted on her to help us sustain that level of growth while ensuring the culture and integrity of the organization stayed intact. Since our company was creating a new form of education in the highly-regulated world of K-12 public education, this was no small task.
Annie succeeded in ensuring we attracted and retained top talent around the country by bringing innovation to the HR function. She had to create new compensation models for teachers and administrators, develop a scalable recruiting and onboarding process, create policies that facilitated our growth while ensuring compliance with complex state-based regulations, and develop a process to handle employee relations matters that had to adapt to local requirements – just to name a few of the challenges she faced. On top of challenges like these, she packaged these services and sold them to our customers, as HR Consulting Services was one of the products we sold them. So, I guess you can add salesperson to the list of talents she possesses.
Our company would not have succeeded all of those years if Annie had not stepped outside of the traditional HR leadership role and become my business partner. To sustain the growth rate and enter new states meant that our business processes had to continually adapt to meet new challenges. She routinely helped the other members of the executive team solve their business problems and design new ways to get things done. She was also frequently asked to interact with leaders outside of our company to discuss and resolve complex issues. I never had to worry how those conversations would go as Annie can handle whatever is thrown her way while maintaining her grace and composure.
Working with Annie and watching what she accomplished is one of the memories I cherish in my career. Rarely does someone get to encounter a talent like Annie and have the opportunity to see it put to work so effectively. Her ability to tackle complex issues and develop innovative, effective solutions is quite special."
Ted Ochs
Finance Executive; Former CFO, Reading Plus; Former CFO and COO, Connections Academy