About Us

Team Smart HR is a Human Resources Outsourcing (HRO) company. We partner with clients to offer full service human resources support for their organization. Our company was founded with these guiding principles:

We focus on the well-being of the employee first and make sure that employees are safe, happy and productive within the organization. When employees are taken care of, the organization is more successful and employers lower their risk of complaints and lawsuits from employees.

Many of our clients have staff who may have limited English language skills. We understand the importance of employees preferring to communicate in the language most comfortable to them, therefore, we try our best to provide access to bilingual HR professionals. Currently, we can support Chinese and Spanish speaking needs from our clients.

One of the main reasons clients seek out HROs is to avoid employee disputes and lawsuits that can bring serious repercussions to their business. When we partner with clients, we always focus on making sure that the client is aware of the laws and policies that their business needs to comply with.

With these principles as our core values, we can provide a broad range of services to our clients while always keeping our commitment to serve the employees, communicate in their language (when appropriate and available) and ensure the client organization is compliant and up to date with the laws. Partner with us to help your organization succeed.

Founder’s Story

Stephanie Zhao is the founder and CEO of Team Smart HR.

While working as the Human Resources Manager for Hakkasan San Francisco, an upscale Cantonese restaurant, she realized that many Chinese restaurants in the area didn’t have HR departments and could not afford to maintain an HR staff. It was also difficult for these restaurants to find HR professionals who could communicate in the language of their staff and were also up to date with compliance laws. When Hakkasan’s Executive Chef, Ho Chee Boon, decided to open his own restaurant, Empress by Boon, he asked Stephanie to manage the HR department for him. It was then that Stephanie decided to start her own human resources consulting firm to help Chef Ho and other businesses with similar needs. Shortly after, ChiHuo, the leading Chinese food and lifestyle media group in the USA, also signed on for HR services from Stephanie. Today, Team Smart HR has partnered with many clients in various industries to provide HR services for their organizations so that they can stop worrying about HR and focus on being successful in their businesses.

With close to 20 years of work experience in Marketing, Executive Administration and Human Resource functions at a variety of companies both in China and the USA, Stephanie has a broad, International view of the business landscape. Some of these companies include Renaissance Hotels (Hospitality), Carrefour (Retail), Avon (Cosmetics), Miasole (Energy) and Google (Hi-Tech). More importantly, for the past 9 years, her experience and passion in Human Resources helped her to ultimately establish Team Smart HR. She is now able to utilize her experience, resources and knowledge in HR to help others.

Stephanie holds a BA in English from Shanghai Normal University and a Certificate in Human Resources Management from Cornell University.

Our Advisors

Our advisors consist of industry experts who we trust for advice on various topics related to the needs of our clients.

Rolland Kwok

Human Resources Executive

Arnel Reyes

Human Resources Executive

Ho Chee Boon

Michelin Starred Chef