About
HR Philosopher
Nicole Eisdorfer is the founder of Truer Words, where she teaches leaders, change consultants and their teams default literacy: the skill of reading which behaviors a system makes easy, obvious or safe, so leaders can design their systems on purpose to produce the behaviors they want from employees.
She spent 17 years in HR across a university, healthcare, retail, non-profits and hospitality, and her last roles were in enterprise HR, working on employee experience, culture insights and process analysis.
She trained leaders to develop people, give honest feedback and show empathy, then watched them work in systems that rewarded throughput, compliance and clean dashboards. When they returned to work, the defaults in their systems rewarded different behavior than they had been trained to use, and the leaders paid the price. This observation began her understanding that systems design shapes employee behavior far more than individual belief does.
Her Ph.D. in Organizational Development and Leadership is from the University of Arizona, where she studied physician burnout and quiet ego. She also holds an MBA from Nova Southeastern University and a BA in organizational behavior and communications from NYU.
Her book, The Default Directive, is due in Fall 2026. She writes about defaults, trust and culture on Substack. She lives in Denver.
Learn more about Nicole's other work, including speaking, writing and research