Creating a sub category for partners so will show on different lists

Hello! We would like to break Partners up into subcategories, like Partner - Dept 1, Partner - Dept 2, and so on. We'd like for each department to have a very custom experience for their partners and these partner records will have other custom records that are only associated to their department. We'd like it so the list views are not talking between departments, so each department will have their own contacts and interactions etc. Wondering if there's any possible solutions aside from creating a custom entity record for each. Thank you!