Specialist: Portfolio Talent

The hardest part of AI adoption in most private equity-backed businesses is not choosing the right tools, it’s the slower work of shifting how people think about their roles, creating conditions where experimentation feels safe, and building the internal credibility to sustain change over time. That challenge often falls to the people and talent function. We have seen that the leaders in Mayfair’s portfolio who have gone furthest with AI are the ones who recognised that and leaned in, rather than waited.

Mayfair’s Portfolio Talent Specialist, Jamie Arnold, brought HR and talent leaders from across our portfolio together at one of our Boost! events to discuss how AI is changing their operating models, what the pioneer profile looks like in practice, and what this shift means for career development inside private equity-backed businesses.

How HR leaders in PE-backed businesses are restructuring their operating models around AI

One of the more practically instructive frameworks to emerge from Boost! discussions came from a head of HR at one of Mayfair’s portfolio companies, who has restructured their entire function around two named AI agents: one responsible for HR operations and documentation, the other handling recruitment workflows and salary benchmarking. Each has a defined scope, a job description, and what they describe as a personal development plan: a roadmap of expanding capability tied directly to their own growing understanding of what the tools can do.

The framing matters as much as the tooling. By assigning formal roles to AI tools within the operating model, with clear boundaries around what sits inside the tool’s remit and what remains a human decision, they created a structure the wider business could understand and engage with. It also created accountability because when the operations agent produces a probation outcome letter or a new-starter contract, there is a defined approval step before anything moves forward.
Running the HR function as a standalone across a headcount of 65, with 16 new hires processed in seven months, they attribute the onboarding workflows they built to freeing up enough time to deliver leadership training and present to the business in ways that simply would not have been possible otherwise.

Why the most valuable early AI adopters are defined by experimentation, not technical skill, and how to identify them

The leaders making the most progress with AI are characterised by a willingness to experiment and fail fast, rather than by technical background. The implication for talent and HR functions is a practical one: if the Pioneer Profile is not technical, it can exist anywhere in the organisation, and it will only become visible if there are structured opportunities to surface it.

One Mayfair portfolio company has built a deliberate incentive architecture around exactly this. An AI Innovator Award offers up to £2,000 per month for employees who submit working AI projects reviewed by the senior leadership team. This runs alongside internal leaderboards, team prizes, and a requirement for all employees to complete Anthropic’s free Claude 101 training programme as a shared baseline. This visibility mechanism surfaces the people who are already building things quietly, without waiting for permission. Instead of treating them as a compliance problem, bringing them in and structuring their experimentation is how pilot projects become operational systems.

How building AI capability is expanding the remit of people and talent leaders in PE-backed businesses

There is a longer-term career pattern worth making explicit, because it is directly relevant to how talent leaders should be thinking about their own development in AI-enabled organisations.

The people and HR leaders who have most expanded their operating mandates over the past decade are those who moved into digital and organisational change before it was standard practice for their function. HR leaders who built credibility in people analytics ended up owning broader business transformation. Those who led complex integrations or capability build programmes, across multiple geographies or through periods of significant M&A activity, found themselves with a seat at strategy discussions well outside their original remit. What AI does is accelerate the timeline for that kind of transition and broaden the range of business problems a people leader can credibly engage with.

The leaders who are furthest along in Mayfair’s portfolio are not the ones who waited for a clear mandate or AI strategy to be handed to them, they are the ones who treated ambiguity as the entry point and recognised that building AI capability is, fundamentally, a people challenge. That is, finding the right individuals, creating the right conditions, and using the capacity it generates to earn a broader role in the business.

Mayfair Equity Partners invests in management teams with exactly that disposition and supports them through our Boost! programme’s network of practitioners working through the same challenges in real time.

In October 2025, Mayfair Equity Partners hosted a webinar hosted by Mayfair’s Portfolio Talent Specialist, Jamie Arnold, and led by Helen Vaid, former Mayfair growth specialist and experienced non-executive director, for an audience of female employees at all levels drawn from our portfolio companies.

The webinar was part of Boost! Mayfair’s networking and development programme, designed to spark collaboration across our portfolio, strengthen connections, and equip management teams with practical tools and insights. Through a series of curated events, the programme aims to unlock potential by empowering individuals, adding value to businesses, and shaping the digital leaders of tomorrow.

A Journey Towards the Boardroom

In her session, Helen shared her personal journey to becoming a board member, a path that began in 2019 while she was still in an operational leadership role. Though fully immersed in her executive career, she recognised that joining a board could enable her to apply her experience in new ways: influencing strategy, driving innovation, and shaping sustainable growth.
Her first step was to ask herself a simple but defining question: Why?
Helen told the group that her motivation lay in helping organisations and people realise their potential. Her experience in digital transformation and human capital could be harnessed to unlock business innovation and long-term value.

“When you find your ‘why’, it becomes your compass, guiding how you lead, where you contribute, and what you stand for.”

Learning and Building Networks

To understand what board service actually involves, Helen joined the Women on Boards programme at Harvard Business School, a 21-week course that equips senior leaders with the insight and confidence to take on board roles. The programme, she said, not only offered practical guidance but introduced her to an extraordinary network of women across industries.

That network proved instrumental. As Helen completed the course, a long-standing contact invited her to join Groupon’s board. It became her first appointment and a pivotal step in her non-executive career.

“Visibility matters. People can only open doors for you if they know what you’re looking for.”

Her appointment to Groupon led to further opportunities with Abercrombie & Fitch and Stewart Title, where she expanded her experience across both public and private boards. Each role, she explained, taught her new lessons in governance, strategic thinking, and leadership collaboration.

From Operator to Board Member

Transitioning from executive to board member required a fundamental mindset shift. “As an operator, you’re trained to act, or to fix, to deliver results week by week,” Helen explained. “On a board, you step back and think in systems. You ask the questions that will shape the company’s next decade.”

Central to this shift is recognising and articulating your superpower, the unique skills or perspective a board member brings. For Helen, that strength lay in digital transformation. When she joined Stewart Title, she admitted she knew little about title insurance. The CEO’s response was: ‘That’s fine. I have people who know title insurance. I need someone who understands digital.’

“Modern boards value diverse expertise. The best teams are built around complementary strengths, not identical backgrounds.”

Purpose and Perspective

Helen encouraged the webinar participants to draw on both professional and personal experiences when defining their board value. Becoming a parent, she shared, had given her new insight into resilience, education, and the future of work, issues that now influence how she contributes in the boardroom.

At Abercrombie & Fitch, where 60 per cent of board members are women, Helen has seen first-hand how diversity shapes better decision-making. When the company faced a high-profile public crisis, the board united quickly around its values, responding with clarity and conviction. “It was one of the most powerful professional experiences of my career,” she reflected.

“Boards with diversity of gender, background, and thought make better decisions, they reflect the customers they serve.”

Empowering the Next Generation

Through Mayfair Equity Partners’ Boost! programme, Helen continues to share her experience with women across the firm’s portfolio, leaders, managers, and aspiring board members alike. Her message is clear: being on a board is not about title or tenure, but about purpose, preparation, and presence.

Mayfair’s approach, she said, extends beyond backing exceptional companies to developing exceptional people at every level.

“When you harness your superpower, you don’t just take a seat at the table, you help reshape it.”

We are grateful to Helen for sharing her expertise, and for continuing to be part of our wider network. By fostering access to knowledge, experience and opportunity, Mayfair’s Boost! programme continues to help individuals, and the businesses they lead, realise their full potential.