Meet the ‘Funny People’ behind NYC’s HR-themed comedy show

Ashley Bendell was scrolling through his LinkedIn feed one day in 2024 when he stumbled on a video that stood out from the sea of posts.

The video was of a speaker at an HR industry event. But unlike most speakers at HR industry events, this one was, well, funny. Bendell was struck by his comedic talents, and his impersonations of celebrities and fictional characters as HR pros. (Who could possibly be better equipped to terminate employees than the Terminator himself?)

Bendell connected with the speaker, Peter Phelan, an HR headhunter who founded a consultancy called ValuesCulture. From there, they developed a friendship, and eventual partnership, starting a pop-up HR comedy show called Funny People in March 2025. Their open-mic nights, featuring HR pros, have taken over bars across New York City.

“[It’s] an open mic for us all to share funny stories, or to try standup, and ultimately, to have a laugh,” Bendell said. “Sometimes people will just get up and have a really hard story to share about their personal lives, or their health, [or] some hilarious stuff that actually happens at work that you wouldn’t believe until someone told you.”

Bendell’s first act. Bendell said his comedic chops can be traced back to his childhood in Scotland.

“Scottish people are known for their banter, for their self-deprecating humor, for pulling each other’s legs at the dinner table,” Bendell said. “The comedy bones have been there…Trying to make people laugh, being…the silly person who doesn’t know when to shut up, and probably annoys people, and still does to this day.”

While attending the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1997, Bendell studied abroad at the University of New Mexico. It was there that he first saw the comedy special Eddie Murphy: Raw. Murphy’s punchlines, which he can still recite “forwards and backwards,” inspired him to want to take the mic.

But Bendell didn’t step into the spotlight until 2008, when, shortly after his 30th birthday, he signed up for a standup class at the People’s Improv Theater (aka the PIT) in New York.

“Whilst my performance was not great, I got one or two huge, hard laughs out of five minutes…Once you’ve done it, and once you’ve heard that [laughter], it’s like a drug, and yes, you want more,” Bendell said.

Working in sales at ADP, where he was learning about the inner workings of HR, he said he yearned for a way to incorporate laughter into corporate America. Enter stage left: Phelan.

Phelan’s first act. Phelan, who is Irish, moved to the US in 1994. While working on the people team at Bloomberg in the early 2000s, he joined Bloomberg Radio for a segment called “The Finance Ear,” during which he answered personal finance questions with humor.

“Well, it was radio, because they wouldn’t let me on TV,” Phelan teased. “They said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so. You’ve got a face for radio,’ which was very, very mean of them.”

It was then, Phelan told HR Brew, that he realized his love of workplace comedy. In 2003, Phelan’s wife signed him up for standup classes at the New School in New York. When the class ended, the 30-year-old started performing at the Comic Strip on the Upper East Side and enrolled in a sitcom writing class.

“This is another Ash and Peter kind of ‘parallel lives that were destined to intersect’ story. We both, unbeknownst to each other…took comedy standup classes here in the city,” Phelan said. “A lot of the early shtick I did was about being an Irishman, kind of new to American culture…as opposed to the HR stuff which came later.”

On with the show. When Phelan saw Bendell’s request to connect on LinkedIn in 2024, he said he was “delighted” by how much they had in common. They soon met for coffee and formed a friendship over hockey games and concerts before realizing the opportunity before them.

“It took several conversations, and coffees, and crazy concert experiences…before we began to think about, ‘What maybe was missing with the other events that we go to?’” Phelan said. “Could there be a space for a different kind of community?”

They wanted to use comedy to create community and felt there was a natural connection between HR and comedy, Phelan said, because people pros often see the “weirdest stuff” and “what humanity is capable of.”

In early 2025, they found an Irish bar with an event space they could use, if they spent a couple hundred dollars at the bar (something they could easily do, Phelan said). Leveraging Phelan’s network, they put on their first show in March, during which 10 people pros performed for an audience of roughly 20–30 people.

“This kind of magical thing happened, which we didn’t predict. We’d done the promotion. Come up with the name, come up with a message, come up with the venue…and then people took the mic,” Phelan said. “People started opening up, and, yeah, they were telling horror stories…Tragedy plus time equals comedy.”

Since then, Funny People has hosted 11 shows—including one at SHRM’s New Jersey chapter’s conference in September, Bendell said—and given HR pros an opportunity to share the hilarity and tragedy of their jobs, and connect over shared experiences.

“It’s just a wonderful outlet to have, and it’s really started to build a wonderful community of people that have come out of their shells and are just trying to have fun at the end of the day, whether we make people laugh or not, we try,” Bendell said.

When many HR pros attend a Funny People show, they don’t intend on performing, Bendell and Phelan shared, until they hear the stories being told. One HR pro, Phelan said, shared how the tension of advocating for employees amid resistance from senior leadership made her “glad she got botox” so she can keep a “good poker face.” Experiences like this inspired others to share their own experiences.

“All the weirdest stories, which are tricky work situations, like total communication breakdown between a boss and somebody reports to them…or somebody does something wildly inappropriate at a holiday party,” Phelan said. “All that stuff flows to us, HR pros, so people come in carrying a lot.”

In the wings. When asked about plans for the future, Bendell teased, “Do you think HR Brew is suggesting they want to co-host an event with us?”

“That was implied. I think there might have been an undercurrent there,” Phelan responded.

While HR Brew and Funny People don’t have plans to co-host an event (yet), Bendell said they do plan to host more shows in New York and New Jersey, and expand into new cities.

“We’re really just enjoying what we can do personally, just us two, and we have day jobs, but we also really believe in this,” Phelan said. “We’re definitely going to be doing more dates per quarter and doubling down on the great reception we’ve already received.”