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Speaking & Appearances

Karina speaks at the intersection of rapid business scaling and intentional life design. Whether exploring the strategic use of AI in HR or the realities of the working-parent juggle, she provides leaders with the tools to build cultures that grow as fast as their ambitions.

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From keynote stages to podcast mics, Karina delivers actionable insights that move beyond HR theory into real-world application.

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Signature Talks & Topics

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  • Scaling without Sinking: Building culture and people systems that evolve as you grow.

  • The Rapid Expansion Playbook: Designing processes to support high-speed hiring and onboarding.

  • The Parent-Employee Revolution: Navigating the workplace with kids and supporting those who do.

  • The Fractional Future: Leveraging fractional leadership to launch your own venture and reclaim your time.

  • Motherhood & Ambition: A roadmap for integrating career and family with zero apologies.

  • AI with Heart: How to use AI to automate the mundane and elevate the human in HR.​

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Booking Karina

Ready to bring the CultureKrew perspective to your next event, webinar, or podcast episode?

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Recent Appearences

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Webinar

Stop Funding Your Competitors' Talent Pipeline: Win the Talent War 

 Listen Here

Stop funding your competitors' talent pipeline. 42% of departing employees say you could have prevented their exit but only if your managers knew how to have career conversations. Join this webinar for five tactical strategies that cut turnover 30-40%: career-focused 1:1s, talent cards, mentorship programs, development stipends, and manager training that delivers 7x ROI. Leave with templates, calculators, and a 90-day plan. Built for finance leaders who need results, not theory.
 

Podcast

Inside the Leaders Mind 

 Listen Here

In this episode of Inside the Leader's Mind, Karina Bensko, CEO of Culture Krew, explains why HR is not "balloons and cupcakes," but a core business function that protects trust, reduces risk, and accelerates growth. Karina shares her path from studying psychology to falling in love with HR at 19, her shift from corporate bureaucracy to the "fail fast" startup world, and why she chose the fractional route to help founders build "good enough to launch today" people systems that can evolve tomorrow. Takeaways • HR is the table: People are doing the work, so HR sits in the middle of how the business operates. • People ops vs people strategy: Ops keeps the lights on payroll, benefits, onboarding while strategy times and scales programs to match growth. • Good enough beats perfect: Start with simple frameworks, then add complexity when the company earns it. • Payroll and benefits are trust: If you don't pay people correctly and on time, nothing else matters. • Manager training prevents churn: Proactive development conversations reduce "funding your competitors' talent pipeline." • Culture must be intentional: Early hires join for the founder; later hires join for the company—values and success behaviors must be clear. • Fractional sweet spot: Often most valuable around 15–20 employees when growth is about to double, until a full-time Head of People makes sense around 120–150.
 

Podcast

Rise, Heal, and Grow

 Listen Here

On this episode of Rise, Heal, and Grow with Leah M. Hill, Leah sits down with Karina Bensko, CEO and Founder of CultureKrew, for a deeply human conversation about growth, grief, and building businesses that don’t lose their soul as they scale. Karina shares insights from her work as a People Systems Architect, guiding leaders through the “messy middle” of rapid growth with intentional culture, fractional leadership, and people-first systems that actually stick. Together, Leah and Karina explore why growth happens in stages, how grief can be a powerful catalyst for evolution, and what it truly means to honor the whole human at work—especially as a founder, parent, and leader redefining success on her own terms.
 

Podcast

Employee Cycle 

Listen Here

On this episode of the Employee Cycle podcast, we have Karina Bensko, SPHR, Director, HR Business Partner at Brightcove, joining us to discuss why HR teams need to do more, faster, when we already do too much while we’re understaffed and overwhelmed.
 

Ready to build a team that drives your business forward?

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