Today we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Norfus.
Hi Natalie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I usually start my story not with my résumé, but with where and who I come from. I grew up in between Cleveland Heights, OH and Washington, DC an only child surrounded by music, photography, and the beautiful contradictions that come from having a Black Christian father from the South and a White Jewish mother whose family fled the Holocaust. My childhood was layered: church and synagogue, Easter dinners and Passover Seders, mac ’n’ cheese and gefilte fish. I am certain this is why I’ve always been attuned to identity and why navigating differences feels like home to me. My parents’ differences didn’t always coexist smoothly, but being raised inside that contrast taught me how to hold multiple identities, perspectives, and histories at the same time. That ability to sit with complexity shaped everything.
My parents also nurtured a sense of curiosity and creativity – my dad has been photographing jazz and blues musicians for more than 50 years, and I got my first camera when I was 10. Music and photography gave me a lens (quite literally) into how people move through the world.
Later, my professional lens came through workplace experiences – first as a labor and employment lawyer inside large law firms, then as a lawyer, HR and DEI leader inside large, complex organizations. I was always in the people business, even before I had the language for it. Workplaces are their own ecosystems of emotion, power, trust, fear, ambition, culture, and conflict, and I found myself drawn to the places where things broke down because that’s where something meaningful could be rebuilt.
Eventually that led me to found The Norfus Firm in 2019. I wanted to help organizations understand the experiences underneath the data points – what people were actually feeling, why distrust was festering, what leaders didn’t know they didn’t know. I wanted to build a practice rooted in humanity, clarity, cultural competence, and accountability. Today, we work with organizations across industries and countries, doing deep culture assessments, internal investigations, and advisory work that is both strategic and heart-centered. And because conversation drives change, we created What’s the DEIL?, a podcast where we ask leaders and practitioners to talk honestly about identity, inclusion, and the complexity of real workplaces.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not smooth at all—and I’m grateful for that. Every chapter stretched me in different ways. Shifting from outside counsel to in-house, then to DEI leadership, then to entrepreneurship felt like reinventing my professional identity every few years. I’ve also been in rooms where DEI was expected to be magical yet invisible, tactical but not too disruptive, measurable but not too uncomfortable. I’ve done investigations where the emotional weight was heavy – people entrust you with some of the hardest moments of their work lives, and you carry that. I’ve navigated the DEI backlash, where suddenly the language and intentions behind this work were being weaponized or oversimplified. And as a business owner, I’ve had to build systems, boundaries, and confidence from scratch.
But the biggest thread through all of it is that this work requires a level of self-exploration that isn’t optional. If I’m tangled internally, it shows up externally. I’ve had seasons of burnout, seasons where my confidence dimmed under the weight of responsibility, seasons where I had to learn to release the idea that leadership means having the answers. These experiences humbled me in the best ways. They taught me that clarity and compassion can coexist, that accountability doesn’t have to be harsh, and that real culture change takes patience and precision – not performative, surface level tactics.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
As I affectionately say, “at The Norfus Firm, we solve people problems.” We’re a boutique workplace culture consultancy that brings rigor, empathy, and data to untangling organizational challenges. Through our culture assessments, internal investigations, and leadership advisory work, we center the human experience and give people the clarity they need to understand themselves, one another, and the systems around them.
We stand out because we refuse to choose between data and humanity – we lead with both. We pair rigorous qualitative and quantitative insights with a deep understanding of the people behind them, and we’re early movers when it comes to tech that makes culture work smarter. Most importantly, we invest the time to learn our clients’ realities so the solutions we design actually work in practice, not just on paper.
Brand-wise, clients experience us as steady, grounded partners who care about their people and offer the kind of perspective that brings clarity without judgment. Global organizations trust us with their most sensitive issues because our work is anchored in both humanity and strategic depth. We embrace complexity in the workplace rather than smoothing it into something that loses the truth of what’s actually happening.
What’s next?
The thing I’m most energized by right now is pioneering the next frontier of skills mapping by guiding organizations through the evolving relationship between human strengths and AI capabilities. In other words: What should humans do, and what should AI do? My goal is to help organizations answer that with nuance, ethics, equity, and clarity. I’m also deepening our tech-enabled culture work by expanding how we use data and AI to give leaders real-time visibility into their workplace climate rather than relying on annual snapshots. And as we continue to expand, I’m building out our advisory bench and developing scalable toolkits and content that support leaders long after the engagement is over.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thenorfusfirm.com
- Instagram: @thenorfusfirm_ [Podcast: What’s the DEIL? (on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts)]
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalienorfus
- Youtube: @whatsthedeil
- Other: https://substack.com/@natalieenorfus?trk=public_post_comment-text
Image Credits
Daniel Wakefield
