San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States, December 2025 — Nicole Hessels has started a new role as Sr. Director, Strategic People Initiatives at Lyra Health, marking an important leadership addition as the organization continues to scale its workforce mental health platform and integrate newly acquired teams.
In this role, Nicole Hessels is leading strategic people initiatives that support organizational growth, integration, and employee experience. Her appointment follows Lyra Health’s integration of Bend Health, where she played a pivotal role in aligning people operations, culture, and leadership frameworks during a period of transition and expansion.
Prior to joining Lyra Health, Nicole Hessels served as Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Bend Health, where she oversaw all people functions including talent strategy, compensation, benefits, workforce planning, and organizational scaling. She directed the Bend-to-Lyra people integration, leading job mapping, communication strategy, and alignment of HR operations, rewards, and culture, while strengthening leadership capability and employee experience across rapidly expanding clinical, technical, and operational teams.
Before Bend Health, Nicole Hessels spent over six years at Exact Sciences as Senior Director, Human Resources – Wellness, Engagement and Employee Experience. During this tenure, she was selected to build a scalable, inclusive, and high-performance culture supporting significant organizational growth. Her work included enterprise-wide engagement strategies, leadership development initiatives, HR communications transformation, and large-scale people analytics, managing sizable teams, multi-location operations, and multi-million-dollar budgets.
Earlier in her career, Nicole Hessels held senior leadership roles at YWCA Minneapolis, including Vice President of Health, Wellness, and Human Resources, where she managed HR, wellness, and community programs across multiple locations. She also served in general management and community impact roles, driving large-scale onboarding, retention, wellness partnerships, and community health initiatives.
Her early professional experience includes leadership positions at OSI Physical Therapy, where she served as Fitness Director and General Manager, focusing on operational leadership, employee engagement, and performance improvement.
About Lyra Health
Lyra Health is the leading provider of workforce mental health benefits, serving more than 17 million people globally. The company is transforming access to mental health care through AI-powered provider matching, personalized support, and a digital platform delivering evidence-based care for individuals and organizations. Independent peer-reviewed research shows Lyra’s care model helps people recover faster while improving outcomes across diverse populations.
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