“My certification has opened me up to people and places I wouldn’t have ever had before.”
— Dakeana Jones-Bishop, Founder of Human Resources Unleashed
How an MBE Certification Opened Doors Dakeana Jones-Bishop Never Expected
Every growing company hits the same wall eventually. A promising employee gets promoted before they know how to lead a team. Policies & Procedures either never get developed or lag behind and slows down growth. Culture quietly breaks down while everyone insists things are fine. Dakeana Jones-Bishop has spent more than 25 years walking companies through that exact moment, and she built Human Resources Unleashed to do it on her own terms.
From Corporate HR to Building Her Own Firm
Her path to entrepreneurship was not a straight line. Jones-Bishop started in HR at Macy’s, rising from manager to vice president over years in big-box retail. Looking for something different, she moved into the cannabis industry, becoming one of the first Black owners & first Black HR executive in that space and serving on its first diversity task force, work that took her back and forth to Washington, D.C. to advocate for federal legalization, diversity and equity, & expungement rights. After seven years at that pace, she decided to build something of her own.
The early days were not easy. Jones-Bishop knew HR inside and out, but running a business was a different skill entirely. Figuring out how to market herself, and how to walk into a room as a woman and minority-owned company and be taken seriously, was its own education. That experience is part of why she now makes a point of helping other entrepreneurs navigate the same learning curve.
“I’ve been doing it, and now I see where there is a need,” she said of the decision to launch Human Resources Unleashed.
A Client List Built on Listening
Today her firm serves small and medium sized businesses and startups across industries, from an HVAC company and a plumbing company to rural public schools to her current work with Boulder County government. What ties the client list together is not sector. It is a gap.
“Everybody has a brand, a logo, all the bells and whistles, but they don’t have anything in place when it comes to HR and their people. That is where your culture is. People don’t take your company serious if you don’t have those things in place. People and Culture have to be your priority”
Jones-Bishop’s approach starts with listening rather than selling. Before any engagement begins, she meets the CEO and leadership team in person. From there, her services that she offers spans from job descriptions and employee handbooks, leadership and change management training, performance management, strategic HR planning, employee relations and basically “everything people”. Lately, much of her work centers on culture assessments, sitting down with a company’s staff in open roundtables that often reveal a very different picture than leadership expects. She also leads a diversity “real talk” series, drawing on her years on cannabis’s first diversity task force, built around honest conversation rather than a standard training deck.
One recent project stands out to her. A CEO was convinced his culture was strong. He knew every employee’s name, their kids, their pets. But after six roundtable sessions, Jones-Bishop found the opposite was true: people did not want to come to work and felt like it was a toxic environment. Rather than getting defensive, the CEO took a hard look at his own leadership and the managers reporting to him. He made changes. Turnover improved, and he still calls Jones-Bishop with updates.
“We just don’t do benefits,” she said. “We’re not the principal’s office. We have a seat at the table, and we actually are a part of the bottom line.”
That bottom line focus is deliberate. Turnover is the clearest measure of impact, she said, and stopping a company from losing ten employees a month is a number any CEO can understand.
How Certification Changed the Trajectory
Certification has reshaped the trajectory of her business. Earning her MBE pushed her to register for a federal SAM number and pursue government contracting, a path she says she never would have taken otherwise. It has also opened doors closer to home, including subcontracting opportunities on major projects and a growing list of companies that call specifically because they want a certified MBE.
Through Mountain Plains, she also completed a 10-week AI Cyber Pro course, and a AI Accelerator Training adding AI fluency in HR to her list of specialties, and is now working through the capital readiness program. She is quick to point out she likely would not have pursued the AI training without her certification opening the door to it.
The Power of Showing Up
Jones-Bishop traces some of her biggest opportunities back to a single Mountain Plains event at Kiewit. A conversation there led to a relationship with a contact who, months later, brought her onto a major project. It is the kind of connection she says would never have happened without showing up in the room.
Locally, the Mountain Plains office and its network of CPA and business support contacts have made a real difference as she has moved into government contracting work, from explaining how to prepare a capability statement to walking her through her first RFP.
“You have to build the relationships and go out there and network in order for you to have that growth.”
What’s Next
Looking ahead, Jones-Bishop is focused on getting in front of and having a “call to action” for more CEOs. She is building a speaking campaign around a simple message: “don’t wait for a crisis, contact HR before a lawyer contacts YOU”. She hopes to eventually partner with a well-known Colorado legal name on the effort, framed around the idea of contacting HR before problems land in court.
She is also continuing to build out her government contracting work, including a pending opportunity at Denver International Airport that she hopes will open more doors for other women and minority-owned businesses.
What Success Looks Like
For Jones-Bishop, success means something specific: a world where people understand what HR actually does. She has watched HR get dismissed for years as the department people only think of at their worst moments, and she wants companies to see it instead as a seat at the table with a real voice.
What keeps her going on the harder days is simple. She trusts that the ebb and flow of running her own business will always trend toward the next win, and she measures herself by the impact she leaves behind at every company she works with, whether that impact is comfortable to hear or not.
In Her Own Words
Ask Jones-Bishop to describe her business in one word, and she does not hesitate: electrifying, a nod to the name Human Resources Unleashed. She will also tell you she is the HR diva of Colorado, a devoted Denver Broncos fan, and someone who stays invested in a client’s success long after a contract ends, checking back in months later just to see how the team is growing.
“I do really care, and I do make an impact. That’s what I want people to know about my company and me.”
Advice for Fellow Entrepreneurs
Jones-Bishop’s advice to other minority entrepreneurs is direct: get out and network, and do not expect a website alone to bring in clients. Success takes legwork, especially at the start, and the willingness to keep showing up even when the payoff is not immediate. “Don’t feel like as a minority entrepreneur that you have to put yourself in just a box,” she said. “Open yourself up, think outside of the box, and know that it’s going to be hard work right out the gate.”
To learn more about Human Resources Unleashed or connect with Dakeana Jones-Bishop, visit https://humanresourcesunleashed.com/ or reach out by phone at 720-428-2341 or send an email to info@humanresourcesunleashed.com.
