Welcoming Rachel Cougan as Yoodli’s VP of People

We’re excited to share that Rachel Cougan is officially joining Yoodli as our VP of People. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because it should. Rachel has been consulting with Yoodli for months, working closely with our team as we’ve grown. We’re thrilled she’s chosen to make the leap from advisor to full time team member.

Rachel Cougan’s background in startup HR leadership

Rachel brings more than 20 years of experience leading people strategy and HR teams inside fast growing tech startups. Most recently, she ran Possible HR, her own fractional people consultancy, where she partnered with founders and leadership teams, typically Series A/B, across AI, SaaS, medtech, robotics, gaming, finance, maritime, and forestry, helping them fix the people side of scale. She’s also an advisor with PeopleTech Partners, an early stage group that connects founders with people leaders to accelerate growth.

Before consulting, Rachel spent nearly three years as VP of People at Logixboard, where she was the company’s first people leader and helped grow the team to 135 fully remote employees across eight countries, hiring more than 80 people in under 12 months while keeping engagement at 88% and offer acceptance at 91% year over year. Earlier, she led people and talent functions at Hiya and Textio, in both cases helping the companies roughly double headcount while building out compensation, recruiting, and onboarding from the ground up. She holds a Coaching Certificate from the Hudson Institute of Coaching.

Why Rachel Cougan’s hire matters for Yoodli’s growth

Yoodli is in an exciting, fast-paced stage of growth, and the people side of scaling a company only gets more important from here.

That’s where Rachel comes in. She has spent her career stepping into fast growing startups and building the structure, hiring engines, and leadership development that let companies scale without losing what made them work in the first place. Having already spent months inside Yoodli as our consultant, she’s not starting from scratch. She knows our team, our culture, and where the gaps are.

“Rachel has been embedded with our team for months, and in that time she’s earned the trust of everyone she’s worked with,” said Varun Puri, CEO and co-founder of Yoodli. “As we scale past our Series B, the strength of our team is what will determine how far we go. Rachel has built People functions at companies like Logixboard and Textio through exactly this kind of high growth stage, and she already understands Yoodli’s culture and challenges from the inside. Bringing her on full time gives us a partner who can build the hiring, leadership, and organizational foundation we need for our next phase of growth.”

In Rachel’s words

“I’ve spent more than 20 years leading People teams and strategy, mostly at fast-growing tech startups, and I love the stage Yoodli is in right now. There’s real momentum, and a lot to build. I’m looking forward to strengthening how we hire and retain great people, developing our leaders and teams, and putting the right structure in place without slowing anyone down.”

Welcome to the team, Rachel.

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