Press & Reviews

"Donna brought a high level of experience and expertise to our discussions of policy and compliance. She updated our employee handbook, revised our hiring processes to reflect best practice, ensured our compliance with legal mandates, and helped us to craft a more inclusive non-discrimination policy. Through her work, she heightened the professionalism of our Human Resources practices."

"I am delighted to recommend Donna Capodacqua to everyone in need of human resources expertise!

"In the six years I've worked with Donna she has developed HR and hiring strategies and processes, created HR policies and procedures, assessed our workflow and organizational design, and developed succession and transition strategies for our not-for-profit charter school. Her knowledge and professionalism have been critical to hiring and retaining teachers and staff who embody our core values—we couldn't have done it without Donna!

"One of the things that distinguishes Donna is her strategic insight—you can always count on her to understand your unique business needs. If you are looking for help to grow your HR practices and you want someone brilliant, efficient and an expert, then you're in great hands with Donna and Chrysalis Partners.

"It has been awesome to work with Donna—her expertise and humor have been perfect!"

“I’ve worked with Donna for several years and have consistently been impressed by her professionalism, knowledge of the field, and vision for creatively accomplishing an organization’s long-term goals. Donna’s holistic approach to HR and organizational infrastructure is effective at not only meeting the needs of my organization, but preparing us for the long term, even in the face of shifting conditions and uncertainty. Donna is detailed oriented and her work product shows it. I highly recommend working with Donna at Chrysalis Partners!”

"Donna Capodacqua is one of the most accomplished human resource professionals I have ever worked with. She can look at the totality of the human resource function and also focus on the individual areas of the function to develop clear, comprehensive policies which recognize the needs of the various elements of human resources, such as staffing, training, and legislative compliance.

"I worked with Donna for 12 years in a business environment that was changing rapidly, requiring the human resources department to adjust to technological, financial, employee relations and legal challenges, while providing employees with the information and guidance to adjust to new workplace norms. Donna developed strategies to implement both current changes while looking forward so that a comprehensive plan for future requirements could also be developed."

“I have worked with Donna for more than 20 years in a variety of roles. When I was a restaurant manager, and Donna an HR Manager, she helped me navigate sensitive employee relations situations with compassion grace and authority. She offered great counsel to help me drive coaching & performance improvement on my team. She was always available to us, a valued resource.

“When I became Vice President of Human Resources, Papa Murphy’s International, Donna helped my team develop our goals, processes and procedures. We were transitioning for aggressive growth of stores, corporate employees at home office & the field and couldn’t afford missteps. We needed to also develop our HR team in our own skill set & new employees. She helped us with the strategic direction, learnings and our own professional development.

“Currently, we are franchise owners & area developers for a restaurant chain in the Pacific Northwest. Donna has been there for us in helping us set direction, develop our team, coaching of our franchise owners. She is a resource for employment needs, issues, performance management, potential harassment claims, and guest complaints regarding employee interaction. Donna helps us with goal setting and follow up. She’s an active listener, pushes us in her coaching with curiosity, learning what is needed for us, for our team. Donna is a true partner in our business and we value her expertise.”

"I want to thank Donna for all of her HR support throughout the years of working with Compass Computing Group. As an IT staffing company, we needed to understand staffing which included hiring new full-time and part-time employees, hiring contractors and terminating employee contracts, identifying and fulfilling talent needs, utilizing various recruitment technologies to acquire a high volume of applicants, terminating contracts were necessary, maintaining ethical hiring practices, and writing employee contracts—which included negotiating salary and benefits. With [Compass Computing Group having] little or no knowledge in each of those areas, Donna was a tremendous resource in helping us understand and implement HR best practices."

"Donna was a tremendous asset to our organization. As a facility with various departments and over 115 employees ranging from senior management to entry level first time employees, Donna worked closely with me to ensure effective training for all staff, performance coaching, and employee engagement. While at the MJCC, she reviewed and expanded our employee manual, led staff trainings, and after identifying the need for employee retention and growth, helped to bring a highly effective Talent Management program to our facility that we still continue to utilize and benefit from today. Donna is professional, organized, efficient and an 'outside the box' problem solver. I valued Donna’s guidance and support and I highly recommend her to any organization looking for an extremely knowledgeable and organized human resources professional."

“Donna was the Board Chair during the several years I was a member of the MITCH Charter School Board. Under her leadership, the Board of Directors successfully renegotiated several important contracts, implemented new policies, along with a reviewal procedure, and guided the Board during times of transition and rehiring. She is honest, experienced, and personable- a great combination for anyone looking to hire a strategic HR consultant.”

“I have worked with Donna Capodacqua for three years. While her help in day-to-day issues has been invaluable on it’s own, the guidance she has provided us on our HR Strategy has been the true blessing. She reorganized our hiring process, taking the ‘gut reaction’ culture we inherited and added structure from beginning to end. We now have a repeatable process to fairly evaluated candidates quickly and set them on a path to success.

“Donna is always quick to identify a ‘unique situation’ that is really a pattern in need of policy and efficiently pulling together the stakeholders to define effective guidelines, whether with employee conduct, compliance responsibilities, even ADA accommodation requests. And she’s led our charge to make performance review a consistent, regular part of our rhythm instead of a yearly exercise, resulting in improvements both in the quality of work and satisfaction of the employees.

“The short of it is we are a much better organization due to Donna’s guidance. I can’t recommend her highly enough.”