Susan Brocaglia
President
Sue founded Creative Workforce Solutions in 2009, after decades working for established HR organizations in a variety of industries.
Since then, Sue and her team have partnered with start-ups, mid-sized businesses, and Fortune 500 companies to streamline and grow the HR landscape, adopt best practices, and identify and develop valuable new hires. A natural problem solver, Sue has a talent for stepping in and providing immediate solutions to structural challenges as well as laying a readily scaled foundation for growth. She’s also been instrumental in developing purpose-built technology solutions that automate and manage many HR tasks, freeing clients’ time to concentrate on more strategic initiatives.
As Creative Workforce Solutions has grown, Sue has focused on expanding the offering from traditional HR consulting to include leadership development and coaching, payroll services, benefits consulting, administrative support, and employee communications. A recognized leader in shaping effective HR practices, Sue also shares her insights as a member of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce and through industry speaking engagements.
Carrie Plantamura, CPC, AHH
VP, Consulting and Coaching Services
To help your organization meet the needs of the evolving workforce, Carrie serves as an Operational Change Agent, Executive Coach, and Strategic Trainer. Her areas of expertise include defining and guiding organizational culture, leadership development, and optimizing workflows and business processes for more effective brand and talent management.
Her focus is on collaborating closely with executives and high potential employees to define and guide the growth of positive organizational culture. Through one on one and team coaching partnerships clients are empowered to maximize their potential and fulfillment both professionally and personally.
As a certified coach, she uses a practical, solution-focused approach to the one on one partnerships. By creating the right environment for each client, possibilities can be explored, awareness increases, and clients are able to change, achieving their self-authored goals.
Maria Olsakowski
Controller/Payroll Consultant
Maria is the heart of Creative Workforce Solutions’ payroll services and professional accounting practice. She often acts as a part of our clients’ HR teams and manages payroll and benefits administration for our clients, as well as handling our own in-house accounting.
Maria began her career as a CPA with Price Waterhouse. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of industries—from banking and real estate to manufacturing— finding her niche in small business development. She has also gained experience in the polar opposite of small business, handling consolidation, SEC reporting and business planning for a major multinational pharmaceutical company. As a result, Maria brings a great depth and breadth of experience to Creative Workforce Solutions’ clients.
Robert O'Connell, MBA
Controller/Payroll Consultant
A longtime controller with experience from startups to big corporate, Bob steps in to help Creative Workforce Solutions clients wherever needs arise. While he's most often called upon to navigate the intersection of finance, operations and organizational strategy, he's just as happy rolling up his sleeves and getting the payroll or accounting in order.
Before joining us, Bob was part of the leadership team at Celmatix, where he oversaw the biotech's financial functions from planning through audit readiness and investor due diligence. His knack for scalable systems and capital efficiency was key to Series B fundraising. Bob has also held leadership positions at eFront Financial Solutions and BGC Partners.
A natural leader and mentor with a positive approach to everything he does, Bob regularly partners with executives to restructure teams, optimize revenue recognition processes and guide compliance.
Mike Erianne
Payroll Consultant
Early in his career, while working as an information technology consultant at various organizations, Mike began to recognize and appreciate the diversity of corporate cultures. Over the years, as he was often tasked with staffing his own projects, he realized the he had a knack for matching the right talent and personalities with the right roles and environments.
Throughout his fifteen years as a consultant, Mike’s interest in recruiting grew. Now, years after making the leap into staffing, Mike is very happy to be part of the Creative Workforce Solutions team. His philosophy about accepting nothing short of an ideal match drives everything he does for the clients and candidates he serves.
Gina Paparella
HR Consultant
From Wall Street and retail to healthcare and nonprofits, Gina brings a wide range of industry insights to her role at Creative Workforce Solutions. What’s more, her experience spans human resources, operations and strategy, giving her a broad view of needs across any organization.
At Creative Workforce Solutions, Gina works closely with our clients to identify and recruit ideal candidates who not only fulfill requirements, but also complement their cultures. In addition, she collaborates with clients and our internal teams to provide a variety of specialized programs and general HR support. Clients appreciate that Gina is detail oriented to the nth degree, a skilled mediator and enthusiastic about any challenge.
Barbara Strautman
HR Consultant
After spending the first part of her career in leadership roles for corporate and advertising agency teams, Barbara brings her expansive skill set to Creative Workforce Solutions. This includes high-level insights and strategy, as well as managing even the most detailed HR functions while chief operating officer of a marketing consulting firm.
Now she works directly with Creative Workforce Solutions clients to deliver a wide range of critical HR services including payroll, resource management, benefits administration, employee handbook development and more. A gifted problem solver, Barbara loves being able to see through stressful situations and creating clear, workable solutions for her clients.
Jocelyn Virgil-Phillips, PHR
HR Consultant
With HR leadership experience at L’Oréal, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson and other household names, Jocelyn offers a wealth of insight into general HR activities, as well as deep understanding of the needs associated with pharmaceutical and consumer goods manufacturing and distribution. In fact, she first connected with Creative Workforce Solutions as the director of human resources at D’Artagnan, Inc., when she brought us in to assist with payroll.
Jocelyn provides Creative Workforce clients with tremendous value across the HR spectrum, with special expertise in employee relations, compliance and policy development. She is particularly adept at conflict resolution and helping people come together and collaborate well as a team.
Melissa Ganchev
HR Consultant
Guided by strategy, data and deep experience, Melissa believes that alignment between performance and core values is key to ensuring that any organization and its people grow and thrive.
A project manager and people strategist at heart, she excels at driving long-term initiatives such as a core value system or compensation philosophy from ideation through implementation. She's a fan of using data as a launching point, often gathering feedback in focus groups, workshops, and engagement surveys. At Creative Workforce Solutions, she's excited about connecting with clients of all sizes as a thought partner and on-the-ground resource.
Melissa brings over 18 years of experience across healthcare, ecommerce, financial services and more, most recently working with life sciences innovator, Orcosa, and retail giant, Wayfair. She's a certified coach with a Master's Certificate in Human Resources Management from Villanova University.
Stephanie Lerch
HR Consultant
Stephanie Lerch has returned, after heading up HR operations for Global Strategy Group. As an HR Consultant, Steph will be guiding clients in best practices for a high-performing team.
Michael Jamison
Contract Recruiter
As a former executive in the manufacturing space, Mike brings a C-level perspective to identifying, interviewing and recruiting prospective employees. His understanding of business operations, team building and how to motivate employees all help him in his work for Creative Workforce Solutions’ clients.
Mike also delivers extensive experience in process improvement, extending the same philosophy he once applied to manufacturing to streamlining processes throughout the organization. He feels that if you can define and automate the routine functions of a job or department, people can devote more energy to tasks that require special focus, leading to continual improvement throughout the organization. This sort of thinking consistently leads to great efficiencies for our clients.
Jason De Ruggiero
Contract Recruiter
This is Jason's dream job—working with employers to identify their needs and find the right candidates, and helping individuals find the position that best matches their skills and goals. He has worked with a wide variety of organizations, from financial services to the federal government, and is always passionate about bringing the right people and companies together.
Jason began his career with recruiting agencies in 1996, moving to the corporate side in 1999. Today, as a contract recruiter with Creative Workforce Solutions, he gets the best of both worlds—becoming part of a company's inner circle while also getting to work in and learn about a variety of industries. When not focused on recruiting, Jason turns to his other passion—music. In addition to being a singer and drummer in a band, he also received his master's degree in music management.
Ginny Erianne
HR Administration
With a background ranging from dance to IT, medical and dental, Ginny brings broad industry experience to her role at Creative Workforce Solutions.
Ginny steps in to support our clients wherever needed, from performing personnel file audits and helping develop handbooks to writing recruitment listings and tracking employee covid test results. She also provides extensive support for our training and management coaching engagements, preparing materials, compiling evaluations and capturing the outputs of these exciting sessions. She loves that Creative Workforce Solutions clients make each day new and interesting.
Noreen Crayton
HR Administration
With experience that spans every facet of human resources and near-limitless capacity to master new roles, Noreen is an exceptional asset to Creative Workforce Solutions clients.
Over more than 20 years, Noreen has developed extensive knowledge and skills in onboarding—with a specialization in I9 compliance—as well as benefits and open enrollment, leave of absence administration including paid family leave and FMLA tracking, recruitment, and HRIS data integrity. She has worked with a wide range of startups and well-established companies in finance, marketing, hospitality, education, journalism, media and entertainment, and the nonprofit sector.
Noreen is an alumnae of Oberlin College, holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from New York City's Pace University and has studied at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City. She's also a certified transformational career and life coach.
Krissy Mihail
HR Administration
Krissy Mihail, our new HR Assistant, to the Creative Workforce Team. She'll be supporting our clients as well as helping refine and customize Hannah for individual organizations.