Hala Achkar Slaiby is the Founder and Managing Partner of People & Co, a Beirut-based organizational advisory firm focused on strengthening the structures behind businesses as they grow, transform and navigate disruption.
With nearly two decades of experience across leading global consulting firms, including Booz Allen Hamilton, Booz & Company, Strategy&, MSE and Kearney, Hala advises founder-led businesses, family enterprises and scaling companies across the Levant and GCC. Her work focuses on the organizational foundations that determine whether businesses can sustain performance as complexity increases.
Strengthening the Organization Behind the Business
For growing companies, success often creates its own challenges. Expansion can introduce more layers of decision-making, new markets, larger teams and increasingly complex accountability structures.
Hala’s work addresses these challenges at critical moments, including rapid growth, restructuring, leadership transitions and regional expansion.
Rather than focusing solely on business strategy, she works on the systems that allow strategy to succeed: governance, organizational design, decision rights, leadership structures, people infrastructure and accountability.
Her approach is grounded in a simple principle: when the organization behind a business is not designed to evolve with it, growth can eventually become a source of fragility.
From Global Consulting to Regional Advisory
Hala’s professional foundation was built through close to two decades in global and regional consulting environments. Her experience across Booz Allen Hamilton, Booz & Company, Strategy&, MSE and Kearney gave her exposure to complex organizational and strategic challenges across markets.
That experience now informs People & Co, where she combines the analytical discipline of multinational consulting with a practical understanding of how organizations operate across the MENA region.
Her work is particularly relevant to founder-led and family businesses, where the transition from personal leadership and informal decision-making toward institutionalized systems can become essential for long-term growth.
Building Resilient Organizations
People & Co works with founders, CEOs and executive teams to address the organizational challenges that emerge as companies scale.
Its work spans three core areas: organizational diagnostics, design and alignment, and advisory and implementation support.
The objective is not simply to introduce new structures, but to create organizations capable of adapting as the business evolves.
This can mean clarifying decision rights, strengthening governance frameworks, developing leadership capabilities or establishing systems that improve accountability and execution.
The ultimate shift is from founder-dependent growth toward more institutionalized and resilient performance.
Developing the Next Generation of Leaders
Alongside her advisory work, Hala is deeply involved in education and leadership development.
She serves as faculty in the Master of Human Resources Management program at the American University of Beirut, where she also sits on the program’s advisory board. She completed her Executive MBA at the university and also teaches at USEK.
Through teaching, speaking engagements, panels and facilitated discussions, she contributes to conversations around organizational design, leadership and transformation across the region.
Her academic involvement reflects a broader commitment to developing professionals who can navigate the increasingly complex relationship between people, leadership and organizational performance.
Turning Complexity Into Decisions
Hala has been recognized by the American University of Beirut as one of its most impactful alumni, reflecting her contribution to both professional practice and the wider leadership community.
Her reputation is built around translating complicated organizational challenges into clear structural decisions that leadership teams can understand and act upon.
For businesses navigating transformation, that clarity can be critical. Growth requires more than ambitious strategy; it requires an organization capable of executing that strategy consistently.
The People & Co Perspective
People & Co operates from the belief that organizational challenges are often mistaken for strategy problems.
As businesses enter new markets, restructure or expand rapidly, systems that once worked can begin to strain. Decisions slow, alignment weakens and execution becomes harder to sustain.
The firm works to strengthen the foundation beneath the business by helping leadership teams establish governance frameworks, organizational systems and leadership capabilities that can evolve alongside growth.
For Hala Achkar Slaiby, the goal is ultimately larger than organizational restructuring. It is about helping businesses build the internal strength to grow without losing clarity, accountability or resilience.
In a region defined by ambitious entrepreneurs, family enterprises and rapidly scaling companies, her work places the organization itself at the centre of sustainable growth—because when the structure behind the business is strong, growth becomes something a company can sustain rather than simply survive.
