The Talentful team

Chris has more than a decade of expertise in leadership and recruitment for game-changing technology companies.

Chris has been instrumental in the growth and expansion of Talentful since its inception and now oversees Talentful’s US headquarters in San Francisco. Chris is a member of the Forbes HR Council and offers his human-first philosophy and insights on the power of leadership, company culture, and redefining recruitment for the transformative age.

Before founding Talentful, Chris was the UK Head of Talent at Audible, the world’s leading provider of premium digital spoken word and entertainment. Prior to that, he was Head of Talent at Zopa, Europe’s leading peer-to-peer lending company and Lead Recruiter at Shazam, focusing on engineering talent.

Phil has fifteen years of experience in recruitment and leadership for some of the world’s most innovative companies.

He has been instrumental in the strategic direction and innovation at Talentful over the past five years and now leads our European operation from London, travelling to Berlin regularly. Phil is regularly cited as one of Europe’s leading startup recruiters and regularly speaks on panels and roundtable discussions. He talks about the psychology of hiring, business and company culture.

Before founding Talentful, Phil led global recruitment (UK, USA, South Korea, and China) for Forward3D (Forward Internet Group, exited to Stagwell Group), Magic Pony Technology (Octopus, Balderton, exited to Twitter) and Thought Machine (Draper Esprit). Prior to this, he was an early employee at Mind Candy (Accel, Index).

Jack Carvel is a dual-qualified and highly strategic lawyer with over seven years of experience supporting high-growth companies to deliver their legal and corporate vision in new markets.

As Global Operations Director, Jack oversees all things operations at Talentful, including Legal, People, Business Operations, Facilities, and IT. In this capacity, Jack has been critical to Talentful’s expansion into new markets, particularly in the US, where he has overseen our rapid growth to 30+ people and more than $2m revenue in our first year.

John’s specialty is working with companies to identify, quantify, and unlock value in growth and scale readiness, with a focus on areas such as team design and structure, operational excellence, commercial modelling, packaging, and positioning. His expertise as an operator and a leader with high-growth companies is both tactical and strategic, helping companies on the rapid scale journey to grow faster with less risk.

John has worked in the people space since 2007 and believes that talent is the most reliable source of sustainable competitive advantage. He has led international teams and worked with clients in NA, EMEA, and APAC. Prior to Talentful, John was the SVP of Sales for EdCast, a SaaS AI-powered knowledge cloud.

Innocent Udia brings to Talentful over fourteen years of leadership experience in Finance and scaling high-growth companies.

He has multi-industry experience in driving operational excellence for many ambitious businesses, including developing scalable processes, leading sustainable growth strategies, and building finance and commercial teams.

Prior to Talentful, Udia served as CFO of AIO and PHASTAR, and previously worked in finance leadership roles at nscglobal, Shine group and SpaceNK. Besides his vast financial experience, Udia is an ACCA fellow member, a Turnarounds Management Association UK member, and has received an Executive MBA from London Business School.

He has also acted as a board member to various group companies during their scale-up journey, provided business partnering service to owners and key stakeholders, led operational efficiency programmes, global expansions and M&A transactions.

Alice has over ten years of experience in talent and recruitment. After working in-house at Octopus Investments to help them grow across the business, she joined Talentful in its infancy to focus on advising scaling businesses. Alice has been integral to Talentful’s hyper-growth over the last five years and is currently a Managing Partner. She recently completed an executive MBA specialising in Strategy, Startups, Entrepreneurship, Supply Chain and Operations.

Alice has a passion for culture and leadership, implementing scalable solutions and helping businesses grow, focusing on quality. She has helped over 100 businesses grow successfully at Talentful to date, with plenty more to come.

Now a Managing Partner based in London, George previously led Talentful’s startup division from its inception in 2018 and built market-beating talent strategies for early-stage teams approaching Series A through to enterprise-scale organisations and those navigating IPO.

George has led Talentful’s partnerships with well-known brands such as DeepMind, King and Investec, and many high-growth challengers who put themselves on the map while partnering with Talentful, such as Hopin and Harbr.

Prior to joining Talentful, George managed the global recruiting function at Cloudreach (acquired by Blackstone in 2017) as the company scaled from 30 to 350 employees in three years. He has built and led talent functions for numerous ‘Tech Track’ businesses and ‘Best Companies To Work For,’ and is currently a mentor at Seedcamp.

Malte has 11 years of recruiting and management experience, predominantly in Berlin. Since joining Talentful, he has helped launch and grow our physical presence in Germany and is responsible for our continued success with German partners.

Before joining Talentful, Malte was pivotal in several growth initiatives in both Fintech and Healthcare, with his tenure at Finleap being a particular highlight.

Jamie joined Talentful in 2017 as a Senior Talent Partner, initially working onsite with Box and The App Business (TAB). Within his current role as VP East Coast, Jamie manages a global portfolio of ambitious, scaling clients.

Jamie’s passion sits within people leadership and people development, as well as providing strategic hiring advice and educating the countless businesses he has partnered with since starting his recruitment career in 2010.

Calum Geraghty is a CIM qualified international B2B Marketing Director with over ten years of marketing experience within the Tech industry. Calum holds a BSc Honours Degree from Oxford Brookes University in International Business, Marketing & Event Management and also a CIM Diploma in Marketing from the Oxford College of Marketing.

Calum has worked in marketing in the USA, Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong and most recently the UK, where he has led global marketing teams for a number of successful SaaS organisations. He joined Talentful as Global Marketing Director in March 2020 and brings with him a track record in delivering profitable marketing campaigns.

Kelly Barnett has over a decade of strategy and development experience across all facets of talent acquisition and human resources.

Kelly formerly served as the People Director for Wagestream and Peakon. Before that, she supported numerous tech organisations through their scaling journey with a specialist focus on employee engagement, leadership development, and employee analytics.

As Vice President of People, Kelly leads and oversees all aspects of Talentful’s people strategy and workplace operations.

Debra is a senior talent acquisition specialist with fifteen years experience, the last six having been spent in senior leadership roles. The majority of her career has been spent in the HR and Talent consulting space and her most recent experience gained within a global RPO.

As an experienced internal TA professional, Debra brings with her a wealth of experience in leading and developing high volume Talent Acquisition teams, strategically partnering with senior leadership and running value add projects to ensure business needs are met. Passionate about evidencing the commercial impact TA has within a business Debra is looking to utilise her previous experiences to help Talentful continue on their current growth trajectory.

Deborah has over 15 years’ experience in Recruitment, with ten of those years spent leading talent acquisition teams across entry level roles to experienced hires. Her experience spans agency, RPO and in-house across past faced enterprise companies.

Deborah joined Talentful in January 2021 as a Talent Director to lead a team of consultants across both enterprise and startup clients.  Deborah is a true business partner who constantly strives for operational improvement and business success whilst, importantly, having fun along the way.

Anthony has over a decade of experience in recruitment and people operations. He spent eight years in the welfare-to-work sector in consulting and leadership roles, helping small to large businesses find their best talent.

Having always sought out new projects and challenges, Anthony transitioned to the tech world for roles as Head of People and Talent at Admedo, SproutIT and Nested. Anthony helped these businesses scale and implement best in class people and talent processes. Anthony’s hard work has been recognised, with SproutIT awarded second place in LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Awards on Employer Branding and Talent Acquisition, as well as being shortlisted for the Best Place to Work in IT 2019 by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT and Computing.

Anthony is passionate about helping companies grow and is a strong advocate for great talent.

Kathryne has over seven years’ experience in Talent Acquisition, and has previously worked in high-growth scale-ups.

Kathryne joined Talentful as a Client Lead in 2019, heading up the WeWork account before moving into a derivative of the Talent Director role at the start of 2020. She has managed accounts from pre-Series A funding through to enterprise, working with businesses such as Thought Machine, Lyst and Eigen Technologies. Kathryne worked alongside fellow Talent Director Jamie Cross to develop and launch Talentful’s Talent Audit in late 2020.

Prior to Talentful, Kathryne has worked as a Talent Acquisition Partner for Agilisys, part of the Blenheim Chalcot portfolio to focus on growing their IT and consultancy teams, before moving to Paymentsense as the first Talent Acquisition Manager, building out their recruitment processes and initial talent function to enable the business to scale.

Ben has eight years of experience in recruitment and has been working with some of the world’s most innovative companies since joining Talentful in 2016.

After studying modern languages at University, Ben began work at a small, tech-focused agency, before joining Talentful. Since then he has led successful growth at companies including Gram Games, Depop, Tractable and WealthSimple.

Ben is currently based in Edinburgh, but frequently travels to London, and can often be found trying to find “London’s best coffee” – a mission which he is yet to complete.

Natasha joined Talentful in 2018, initially as a Senior Talent Partner, before moving into a Client Lead role which preceded her current position as a Talent Director. Prior to that, Natasha spent six years in a commercial agency environment and also gained additional experience within media advertising in a sales and customer success capacity.

Natasha is passionate about people and performance and is dedicated to providing talent teams with the tools and guidance required to support effortless recruitment processes and, in turn, generate client happiness!

Gareth has over a decade of international experience in leadership, consulting and recruitment spanning US, UK and APAC markets.

Prior to joining Talentful, Gareth led the establishment and growth of the Talent function for the digital innovation hub of Hallmark Cards in Santa Monica, CA. He also provided growth consultation and embedded recruitment services to numerous tech startups, scale-ups and digital transformation programmes in Sydney and Los Angeles before returning to the UK.

With an approach defined by transparency and collaboration, Gareth has a keen interest in organisational psychology and neurodiversity as a driver of innovation and growth.

Simon has over ten years’ experience of recruiting into global enterprise level tech businesses across the UK, Europe and the US.

Prior to joining Talentful, Simon led a team of recruiters at Booking.com, playing a key role in shaping recruitment processes and strategies for their UK business unit. He’s passionate about leading and developing recruiters and helping companies deliver world-class recruitment experiences by creating frictionless processes.

Keri joined Talentful with seven years’ experience in recruitment and leadership for high growth companies. She is passionate about leading teams, building close partnerships with her clients, and is excited to help expand Talentful’s US footprint. 

Prior to joining Talentful, Keri was instrumental in building out Russell Tobin’s San Francisco presence, which included scaling recruitment and account management teams as well as identifying and pursuing commercial opportunities.

Abigail joined the Talentful team with a background in hospitality that translates directly to the way she interacts with internal and external customers alike. Prior to joining Talentful, Abigail managed a mid-sized agency that assisted startup to enterprise customers scale at speed. 

When Abigail isn’t working to provide outstanding customer service to all parties involved, she can be found in the mountains, playing first person shooting games or in the sky where her passions lie. Abigail prides herself on creating impactful, lasting professional relationships while problem solving with highly efficient results.

Over the past decade, Lindsey has gained expertise in full cycle recruiting and leadership, data management, hiring process assessment, client and stakeholder management, people management, business development and executive partnership. Lindsey has had the privilege of leading teams and partnering across world class organisations like Robinhood, CZI, Microsoft, Zoox, PayPal, Machine Zone and many others to advise and refine internal recruiting functions while building out teams across tech and non-tech. 

Lindsey’s passion for excellence in recruiting is matched by her passion for best practices in people management and the psychology behind human nature and motivation. Whether recruiting directly or managing directly, she aims to inspire others to find their true calling and ultimately best selves.

Bryan has over 12 years’ experience in sales, recruitment, and leadership within small to enterprise level companies. Half of that time was spent mentoring, coaching, and developing teams. He has a passion for helping those around him to realise their personal and professional goals and to level up to become better versions of themselves. 

Prior to joining Talentful, Bryan led the talent acquisition function for Verizon’s Chief Marketing Officer and Corporate Strategy groups. He also brings expertise in Engineering, IT, and Sales recruitment. He leverages his varied background to provide consultative advice for clients to solve complex business challenges.

When not working, Bryan loves to spend time with his wife Sarah, daughter Madison, and two pups Cody & Lucy. He enjoys hiking, camping, cycling, running, and generally spending time outside in the mountains or at the beach.