Media & Speaking Kit

Everything you need to book, brief, or feature Kris Treytl

25-year HR veteran. Founder of HRBS.ai. Silicon Valley insider. First-time CEO. The woman who built the thing she always wished existed. Bio, talking points, suggested questions — it's all here.

Questions not covered here? Get in touch directly.
Bios

Three Lengths, Ready to Use

All bios are written in third person. Use whichever length fits your format. If you need something customized for a specific audience or angle, just ask.

One-Line Bio ~280 characters

Kris Treytl is a 25-year HR veteran, Silicon Valley insider, and the founder of HRBS.ai — who got tired of watching managers fail without support and built the AI-powered HR partner she always knew was missing.

Short Bio ~100 words

Kris Treytl, MS, is the founder of HRBS.ai and a 25-year HR veteran who has worked everywhere from Oracle and Gap Inc. to unicorn startups in Silicon Valley. She built her career across L&D, executive development, employee engagement, and HRBP work — getting a close look at every level of how organizations actually function (and where they break down). After watching managers repeatedly fail without the support they needed, she stopped waiting for someone else to fix it and built Lisa: an AI-powered HR partner modeled after her own practitioner expertise. She is based in the Bay Area.

Full Bio ~250 words

Kristina (Kris) Treytl, MS, is the founder and CEO of HRBS.ai and one of the most credentialed voices in the intersection of HR practice and AI. With over 25 years of experience spanning Fortune 100 giants and high-growth Silicon Valley startups, Kris has built a career defined by one consistent belief: managers need better support than they get, and the gap between what companies promise and what HR can actually deliver has been costing organizations in silence. Kris began her career in learning & development and organizational effectiveness at companies like Oracle and Gap Inc., building global programs in leadership development, employee engagement, and executive coaching before eventually — her words — "succumbing to the dark arts of HRBPs." As an HR Business Partner, she brought a strategic lens shaped by years of working at the practitioner level, earning a reputation for the kind of no-BS HR approach that line leaders actually trust. After spending time at a hyper-growth unicorn startup where she was the sole HRBP supporting five business units, 50 managers, and more than 300 employees, she reached a breaking point. The technology had finally arrived to do something about the manager access gap she'd been watching for decades. So she built HRBS.ai. Lisa — HRBS.ai's AI-powered HR Business Partner — is modeled directly after Kris's 25+ years of practitioner expertise and has been evaluated across 3,400+ simulated HR scenarios with a 94/100 median score. Kris is based in the Bay Area and is available for podcast interviews, keynote appearances, and panel conversations on HR, AI, and the future of work.

What Kris Speaks On

Key Topics & Angles

Kris brings practitioner expertise to conversations that usually get dominated by theorists and vendors. She's been in the rooms, seen the consequences, and built something real. These are the angles she can speak to with genuine authority.

The Manager Access Gap in HR
Why most managers make their most consequential people decisions without any expert support — and what the real cost of that looks like inside organizations.
Building AI as a Domain Expert, Not an Engineer
What changes when the practitioner's knowledge becomes the product — and why most HR AI tools miss the mark because they were built by the wrong people.
The Real Cost of Undertrained Managers
Preventable turnover, legal exposure, broken team dynamics. The downstream cost of the manager access gap isn't theoretical — Kris has seen it play out over 25 years.
Silicon Valley Startup HR: What They Don't Tell You
What hypergrowth actually looks like from inside the people team, the title inflation and manager scaling problems nobody writes TechCrunch profiles about.
Building a Company for the First Time (at This Career Stage)
The honest version of founding a startup after 25 years in a domain — what the founder content doesn't tell you, and what keeps you going anyway.
HR AI and What It Should — and Shouldn't — Do
What Kris thinks about where AI belongs in the HR function, what it still can't replace, and how domain experts should be shaping what gets built.
For Podcast Hosts & Interviewers

Suggested Interview Questions

These are questions Kris can answer with depth and specific stories. Feel free to use them verbatim, adapt them, or use them as starting points. The conversations tend to go somewhere interesting.

  1. 1 You spent 25 years in HR before founding HRBS.ai. What was the moment you decided to stop waiting for someone else to build the solution and build it yourself?
  2. 2 You've described what you call "the manager access gap." Can you explain what that means and why it's been so persistent even in well-resourced companies?
  3. 3 You've worked at both Fortune 100 companies and Silicon Valley unicorns. What surprised you most about how different the HR problems look at each end of that spectrum?
  4. 4 Lisa is described as being "modeled after" you. What does that actually mean in practical terms — how does your 25 years of experience show up in how Lisa behaves?
  5. 5 Most AI tools in HR are built by software engineers trying to understand HR. You're an HR practitioner trying to understand software. How has that reversed perspective shaped what you built?
  6. 6 You ran over 3,400 simulated HR scenarios before you were willing to put Lisa in front of a real manager. That's a remarkable level of rigor. What were you most worried about getting wrong?
  7. 7 You've been building in public and talking honestly about the struggles — the ghosted co-founder, the shifting technology, first-time CEO mistakes. What's the thing you wish more founders talked about honestly?
  8. 8 There's a lot of anxiety in HR about AI replacing the function. Where do you actually land on that? And is there a version of the future where AI makes HR more essential, not less?
  9. 9 What's the most common mistake you see managers make that a good HRBP could fix in fifteen minutes — but most managers never get that conversation?
  10. 10 You say Lisa knows when to escalate — that there are categories of situations where she won't try to coach through it and instead sends the manager straight to their HR team. How did you decide where those lines are?
Reference Material

Existing Content

Background reading for producers, bookers, and editors who want to go deeper before the conversation.

Blog Post
What I Learned at a Unicorn (AKA How Lisa Was Born)
The full narrative of Kris's time at a hypergrowth startup and why it led to building HRBS.ai.
Product
HRBS.ai — Lisa, the AI HRBP
Full product information, validation data, and the technical detail behind what Lisa does.
Founder Story
Meet Kris — Personal Brand Hub
The full founder narrative in Kris's voice, with the honest startup story included.
LinkedIn
8-Post LinkedIn Content Series
Kris's written voice across eight angles — a quick way to understand how she thinks and communicates.

Book Kris or Pitch Your Show

Available for podcast interviews, keynote conversations, panel discussions, and media features. Typical turnaround on booking inquiries is 48–72 hours.

Get in Touch kris@hrbs.ai