Strong teams are built on purpose.
HR, recruitment, and workforce development for small businesses, nonprofits, and government contractors that are growing faster than their people systems.
The work grew. The people systems did not.
Most organizations reach the same point. The work is real and the demand is there, but the infrastructure behind the team never caught up. There is no dedicated HR leader. The handbook was written years ago, if it exists at all. Hiring happens through referrals and good intentions. Then a new contract lands that needs twenty people in thirty days.
That is where we come in. Keligraphy brings senior HR, recruitment, and workforce expertise to organizations that need it now, and builds the systems your team can run long after we step back.
People & Workforce Services
Engage us for a single project or ongoing support. Every service can stand alone or pair with our proposal and AI & operations work.
Fractional HR & Ongoing Advisory
Senior HR leadership on a part-time basis, for organizations that need experienced judgment but are not ready for a full-time hire.
- →Employee relations guidance, discipline, and grievance support
- →Day-to-day policy and employment questions answered by someone who knows your organization
- →Manager coaching for difficult conversations and performance issues
- →Updates when employment laws change and what they mean for you
- →A dedicated support channel your staff can use with confidence
Handbooks, Policies & HR Compliance
Clear, current policies that protect the organization and treat people fairly.
- →Employee handbook development or full review
- →Policy gap assessments, including leave, timekeeping, and separation practices
- →Offer letter, employment agreement, and HR form templates
- →HR compliance audits with a prioritized list of fixes
- →Federal contractor requirements, including Service Contract Act and VEVRAA obligations
Recruitment & Talent Acquisition
Full-cycle recruiting built for speed and quality, from a single critical role to a large-scale ramp-up.
- →Job descriptions, role design, and hiring plans
- →Sourcing, screening, and structured interview design
- →Competency-based candidate assessments that are fair and defensible
- →High-volume hiring campaigns and hard-to-fill technical searches
- →Recruiting process design, applicant tracking setup, and hiring metrics
Government Contract Staffing Support
The staffing plan in your proposal should match the people who show up on day one. We connect the two.
- →Key personnel sourcing and letters of commitment for proposals
- →Staffing plans, labor category mapping, and position descriptions
- →Wage determination and prevailing wage alignment
- →Clearance-ready candidate pipelines and flow-down requirement tracking
- →Veteran outreach and hiring strategies
People Operations, Onboarding & Organizational Design
The processes that shape how people join, grow, and leave your organization.
- →Onboarding and offboarding workflows, including secure document collection
- →First 90 days plans that improve retention
- →Salary benchmarking, job leveling, and pay structure review
- →Organizational charts, role clarity, and workforce planning
- →Process mapping to remove bottlenecks from HR operations
Workforce Development & Training Program Design
Training and talent pipeline programs designed from the ground up and built to produce measurable outcomes.
- →Curriculum design using proven adult learning methods
- →Apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship program design
- →Train-the-trainer and manager development programs
- →Employer partnership and placement strategies
- →Program design and performance reporting for publicly funded workforce programs, including WIOA, TANF, youth, and reentry initiatives
Built for organizations doing important work with lean teams
- →Small businesses growing past their first ten or twenty employees and feeling the strain.
- →Nonprofits and mission-driven organizations that want people practices that match their values.
- →Government contractors, primes, and subcontractors staffing new awards, meeting flow-down requirements, and pursuing work that depends on strong key personnel.
- →Workforce development organizations, community colleges, and training providers building programs that lead to real jobs.
- →Employers building new talent pipelines opening doors through apprenticeship, veteran hiring, and fair chance hiring.
We build it with you, then hand you the keys
Listen
We start with how your organization actually runs, who is on the team, and what is at stake.
Assess
We review your current policies, processes, and hiring practices against your goals and your compliance obligations.
Build
We create the handbook, the hiring process, the training program, or the staffing plan, alongside the people who will use it.
Hand off
You get documented systems, trained managers, and clear next steps. The goal is capability your team owns, not ongoing dependence.
Support that fits the need
- →Project-based. A defined scope with a flat fee. Best for handbook reviews, compliance audits, program design, and recruiting searches.
- →Fractional retainer. A set number of monthly hours for ongoing HR advisory and employee relations support.
- →Hourly advisory. Focused help for a specific question, situation, or decision.
- →Bundled with a proposal. Staffing plans, key personnel, and workforce approaches built into your proposal from the start, with hiring support after award.
Experience measured in people hired, trained, and retained
- →Led recruitment operations for federal agencies, municipal governments, and Fortune 500 employers across IT, utilities, healthcare, and professional services.
- →Delivered more than 1,000 hires in three months on a single high-volume campaign.
- →Rebuilt a recruiting team that had missed its contract goal for five straight years, then led it to four record-breaking quarters.
- →Reduced time to fill for critical roles by 30 percent, with 85 percent retention.
- →Built vocational training programs from the ground up, supporting roughly 600 internship and early-career placements a year.
- →Directed a Cyber and AI apprenticeship program across four cohorts with strong employer conversion.
- →Achieved a 90 percent placement rate into post-secondary education and career pathways for a youth workforce program.
Prior professional experience. Client names withheld per confidentiality.
HR built by an operator
- →Compliance-first. Policies and processes are built to hold up under review, whether that review comes from an auditor, a contracting officer, or your own staff.
- →Human-centered. Deep experience with people facing barriers to employment, including veterans, young adults, and people returning from incarceration. Good HR works for everyone.
- →Senior-level, every time. You work directly with the person doing the work. No junior hand-offs.
- →Connected to the whole picture. Because we also write proposals and advise on operations, your people strategy lines up with what you promised and how you deliver.
Danielle Dow-Little
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Visionary Officer
Danielle leads Keligraphy's People & Workforce practice with more than 20 years of experience across human resources, talent acquisition, workforce development, and organizational transformation. She has served as a senior HR and operations executive for a federal contractor, led high-volume recruitment operations for major employers and public agencies, built vocational training programs from the ground up, and directed a Cyber and AI apprenticeship program.
Her work sits where people, compliance, and operations meet. She builds HR and workforce systems that are fair, defensible, and practical enough for lean teams to run, and she brings particular depth in serving communities that are too often left out of good jobs.
Credentials include Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, ISO 9001:2015 QMS Internal Auditor, Certified Quality Manager, ISO 31000 Risk Management, Change Management Foundations, SHRM Employing Abilities at Work, Paralegal Certificate (Hampton University), and AI certifications from Microsoft, Google, AWS, and IBM. BA in Law & Society, American University.
Frequently Asked Questions
Let's talk about your team.
Whether you need to hire quickly, fix a policy problem before it grows, or build a workforce program that lasts, start with a conversation.
Schedule a Consultationinquiries@keligraphy.com