Background

After more than 15 years in senior People leadership roles at organisations including Expedia Group and Simply Business, Ayse Bouvet found herself asking a question many experienced professionals eventually face:

What does the next chapter look like?

Having spent her career helping technology businesses navigate growth, leadership transitions, culture change, and fundraising, she knew she wanted to continue working closely with founders and leadership teams. She also wanted greater autonomy, more flexibility, and the opportunity to focus on work that felt meaningful and aligned with her values.

That led to the creation of PeopleVantage.

The Challenge

Like many professionals transitioning from corporate leadership into independent work, Ayse wasn’t lacking expertise.

The challenge was translating a broad and highly valuable set of skills into a proposition that founders could quickly understand and buy.

Her experience spanned leadership development, executive coaching, organisational design, talent strategy, culture, fundraising readiness, and People leadership.

The question wasn’t whether she could help.

The question was how to package that experience in a way that clearly communicated the value she brings.

Finding the Focus

Through her work with founders and leadership teams, a consistent theme emerged.

Many scaling businesses don’t struggle because they lack ambition, funding, or opportunity.

They struggle because leadership teams become misaligned as the business grows.

Founders often come from very different backgrounds. Some are highly technical. Others are commercially driven. Some are visionary thinkers, while others are operators. As investor expectations increase and organisations scale, those differences can create friction, slow decision-making, and impact execution.

This insight helped bring greater clarity to Ayse’s positioning and the challenges she is best placed to solve.

Building a Commercial Model

The process also helped simplify how her services could be presented to the market.

Rather than leading with a long list of capabilities, the focus shifted towards a clear client journey:

  • People & Leadership Diagnostic
  • Leadership Alignment Reset
  • Executive Coaching
  • Fractional Chief People Officer Support

This created a more structured way for founders to engage, while remaining flexible enough to support businesses at different stages of growth.

Where Things Stand Today

Today, Ayse continues to build PeopleVantage, combining Fractional Chief People Officer engagements with executive coaching and mentoring work.

She works primarily with founders and leadership teams navigating growth, fundraising, leadership transitions, and organisational change.

Her focus is helping ambitious businesses build stronger leadership, healthier cultures, and the foundations required to scale successfully.

Adrian’s Reflection

Ayse is a great example of someone who already had the experience, credibility, and expertise.

The opportunity wasn’t to reinvent anything.

It was to create greater clarity around the value she already delivers and make it easier for potential clients to understand where she can have the greatest impact.

Many experienced professionals underestimate how much value they have accumulated during their careers.

Sometimes the biggest breakthrough comes from stepping back, identifying the patterns in your experience, and presenting them in a way that others can quickly understand.

Connect with Ayse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayse-bouvet/