Influential Businesswoman Awards 2025 | 5 especially women – can thrive without sacrificing their sanity, families, or values.” The truth is that, whilst talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. Shannon aims to change this, not only through her company, but also by speaking at events and empowering those women looking to grow as leaders or become entrepreneurs. As for her next steps, Shannon’s journey is interwoven with that of GritHR, and the company is just getting started. Its future plans include delivering fractional CHRO services through a practice that will see executive-level HR strategy afforded without the usual price tag, as well as introducing a membership programme to provide mentoring and tools to industry professionals – complete with live coaching and absolutely no fluff. Elaborating on this, Shannon told us: “I’m not here to play small or stay safe. I want to be the name people think of when they realise HR can be bold, strategic, and business-critical. That means scaling GritHR into the best alternative to traditional, in-house HR and PEOs, especially for high-growth, high-stakes environments.” Through this, it’s clear Shannon is doing more than just leading a company – she’s leading a movement. Whilst Shannon Anderson is a CEO, she is also a mom and a veteran’s wife, and has built her business between naptimes, bedtime stories, and peewee cheer competitions. Shannon always shows up human, and it’s this humanity that shines through across GritHR Solutions. This award is all about blazing trails, and for rewriting the HR playbook one messy and powerful step at a time, Shannon is more than deserving of being recognised as a trailblazer. Contact: Shannon Anderson Company: GritHR Solutions Web Address: https://grithrsolutions.com/ rior to launching GritHR in 2021, Shannon Anderson wasn’t doing HR, she was transforming it. In roles across healthcare, law, tech, and manufacturing – all in a career that has seen her build entire HR departments from scratch, deliver post-merger HR integration strategy, and guide countless leaders through crises. Having worn the hats of the therapist, the fixer, the builder, the enforcer, and more, Shannon has always thrived as a result of one overarching belief: HR should not only have a seat at the table but know how to flip the table if it’s not working. “I don’t do HR for the sake of HR. It should be operational and drive business outcomes. ” GritHR isn’t your typical HR firm and that’s by design. Shannon built it for the founders and CEOs who understand that people strategy is business strategy. GritHR acts as a fully embedded HR engine: handling everything from compliance audits to recruiting, org design, leadership coaching, restructuring, workforce transformation, and building HR departments from the ground up – all without what Shannon refers to as the “red tape or the canned corporate fluff”. Collaborating with no-nonsense founders, CEOs, and private equity firms within tech, healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services, GritHR prides itself on bringing structure, strategy, sanity, and scale allowing clients to grow without HR chaos pulling them under Shannon and her powerhouse team do this through a combination of guts, heart, and – as the company name suggests – grit. Grit is more than branding. It’s the throughline of Shannon’s entire career, as when she first started in HR, she told us being a woman meant “learning to speak twice as loud to be heard half as much”. Boardrooms were almost entirely male, mentorship was scarce, and expectations couldn’t have been higher. Support was also minimal, with HR often being dismissed as ‘soft’ and female leaders forced to prioritise compliance over strategy. Thankfully, things have changed, and women are now dominating HR, claiming seats at the table and launching their own people-centred, profit-driven firms. Shannon has not only seen this change happen firsthand; she has also played a part in making it happen. Over the course of her career, Shannon has mentored dozens of women in HR who have flourished in their HR careers. At GritHR, she’s created a company where smart, capable, women (and men) can lead without sacrificing their families, values, or mental health. This reflects a commitment inherent right across GritHR – to support women and other underestimated talent at every turn. Shannon explained: “I created a company where smart, capable people – ‘Trailblazer’ is a word that’s thrown around a lot, but when it comes to Shannon Anderson, the founder and CEO of GritHR Solutions, it’s the only one that lands. Starting the company from a laptop at her kitchen table, Shannon has grown GritHR into a seven-figure firm serving clients across the US, with zero outside funding. Underpinning this success is the more than 15 years prior Shannon spent in the HR trenches, giving her the skills to serve as the secret weapon behind some of the United States’ fastest-growing companies. We caught up with Shannon to find out more about her impressive journey. P May25160 Trailblazing HR Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 (USA): Shannon Anderson
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