Top 50 Talent Leaders In Tech US

Why They’re Awesome:
Kelly knows precisely what to say and how to say it for maximum impact and to leave a lasting impression. Kelly’s strategic vision for leveling up her organization is inspiring and it’s no wonder she has succeeded in many roles and at world-class organizations like Amazon and Korn Ferry.

Their Unique Insights:
“You have to start with the fundamentals – what is the story you are trying to tell and the key selling points? What is the EVP? You have to do the work to establish what is unique to your organization and ensure that when people come onboard they are living that experience authentically.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Jocelyn brings a vibrant energy and passion to finding new and unique ways to make an impact in engaging Talent that is unmatched. It’s no surprise to see Duolingo doing so well and to be cited multiple times as an inspiration for other leaders on the list..

Their Unique Insights:
“Our motto this year is Building Rainbows. How can we actually as a TA team be more cross-functional? If an intern turns down an offer from us, we should go back to them next year. However, if they still say no to us, how do we continue that relationship from the university team to the industry team to go back to that candidate three years later and say, ‘hey we have a senior software engineering role, would you be interested?'”

Why They’re Awesome:
Becky is a rare mix of innovation, strategy and execution. Her leadership at HubSpot over the past seven years has drawn plenty of respect from her peers, with HubSpot being the most referenced inspirational company for Talent Acquisition leadership and innovation in the Top 50 interview process.

Their Unique Insights:
“If we’re truly going to scale, we have to be recruiting as a growth center — not a cost center.

We formed a workforce planning team and partnered with our key operational planning teams to create a long-term hiring model. By using analysis and assumptions on recruiter capacity, we were able to predict what our org needs to look like and the lead times we need to staff our recruiting team. We also had to establish the right shortcuts and put the right buffers in place to create opportunities for recruiters to optimize versus just crank and burn out.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Elin has led Talent Acquisition at many world-class brands, including Workday and Ultimate Kronos Group. Elin’s particular strength is in identifying, curating and leveraging technology to further enable TA in decreasing bias, capturing actionable analytics and improving the acceleration of our skills-based hiring futures.

Their Unique Insights:
“One of the most interesting areas of Talent Acquisition is workforce planning. There’s always this lack of connectivity somewhere between Finance, Business Strategy, HRBPs’ people strategy and TA Capacity, so I’ve always been very involved in bringing those pieces together. The dots have to connect between the business demand and Finance, while HR helps implement the plan.”

*Elin has since moved to UKG. Here she is primarily recognized for her work at Workday.

Why They’re Awesome:
Alice is a forward-thinking leader who continually pushes against the status quo to make recruitment more inclusive, more innovative and more fun. Alice utilizes her experiences at global innovation leaders like x the moonshot factory and DeepMind to improve candidate experience at Google.

Their Unique Insights:
“If you ask why a few times you’ll find sometimes we’ve been doing it just because. It’s about questioning things that people often assume are here for good reason but sometimes they are not.”

Why They’re Awesome:
James and Airbnb are well-known for doing things ahead of the curve. From publicly announcing their Work From Home Forever policy to their views on creating a Belonging Index, James is leveraging his multi-faceted experience at Airbnb, Uber, Twitter and Zynga to shape a better future in the talent world.

Their Unique Insights:
“At Airbnb, we’ve adopted a Belonging Index. If you feel respected, heard and honored for your contributions, you’re going to be able to contribute more to your role. So we’ve focused primarily on bringing resource managers, we call them affinity groups, into the fold here.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Danny is a versatile leader who knows how to accomplish a lot within a small team and uses crowdsourcing and task forces to fill accountability gaps usually owned by leads or entire teams. Danny understands that Talent isn’t just about attracting and acquiring talent but taking care of existing employees to showcase a floushing culture.

Their Unique Insights:
“I’m constantly looking for things that are scalable, quantifiable and there’s not a lot of wasted motion. Everything we do in interviewing is pretty specific and we’re looking for very specific answers. We know based on our data that if someone answers these questions well, they are historically a very good employee.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Leading one of the most desirable tech brands today, Carla is a compassionate leader who leads by example. An Air Force veteran and “vet” of Talent Acquisition, Carla is driving the future of recruitment revolving through cultivating talent from underutilized talent pools and focusing on the long-term potential of candidate experience.

Their Unique Insights:
“I’ve focused on improving both our internal and external partnerships across the industry, enhancing our strategic capabilities at every level (ie: ability to be prescriptive and consultative versus transactional), identifying possible single points of failure that might exist (a huge risk in such an aggressive hiring market) and ensuring our teams operate with a continuous process improvement mindset where actionable feedback is given early and often.”

Why They’re Awesome:
John’s experience shines through what his team has been able to accomplish – a cornerstone example of his humility. John understands the importance of building a relationship with a candidate and finding ways to reinvigorate engagement beyond just the transaction of their initial interview process. John is one who sees the forest through the trees as he finds great opportunity for Talent Acquisition in the Great Resignation.

Their Unique Insights:
“It’s not easy to do, but TA has to focus on how well we can sell the company, stay focused on our EVP and how we create an epiphany with our candidates. And even if we don’t win, how do we keep in touch with them in 12-18 months to make sure we can reintegrate them into our pipeline and ensure our EVP is authentic, so they know they weren’t sold a bill of goods.

For me, the Great Resignation is the biggest opportunity TA has seen in my 20+ years. It puts a lot of pressure on us but it’s our best opportunity to tap into people who wouldn’t listen in the past either for readiness to make a move or simply due to geographic barriers.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Hannah brings a fresh perspective to Talent Acquisition. She’s challenging the status quo in hiring a taxonomist for her team and looking for talent outside the tech talent pool. It’s no surprise she’s been able to make such an impact at one of the five most frequently mentioned inspirational companies of our award winners.

Their Unique Insights:
“If you’re trying to launch the mindset of ‘who has the skills for the job’ instead of just ‘who has done the job before’ do more research on the market and get creative. Opportunity should be open to people who don’t look like the typical hire, so think about where the skills might be (if not just in software/tech) and how you can pull from there to increase the size of the pool, as opposed to just swapping talent within the same pool.

For example, on my team I hired a taxonomist early on, who’s created a mapping of candidates on the market and their skillsets. We can then talk about the general shapes of people, like ‘backend engineer’ and then connect that to all roles where the shape might be of value.”

*Hannah has since moved to Binti. Here she is primarily recognized for her work at Stripe.

Why They’re Awesome:
A holistic and strategic thinker, Lauren understands the intracies of all elements of Talent Acquisition and the importance of inclusivity in all processes and partnerships established.

Their Unique Insights:
“It’s easy to get stuck in a reactive cycle and start searches over from scratch each time a new need pops up. Not enough teams leverage their current talent communities and networks and stay in touch with past applicants or referrals. As we continue to scale at such a fast clip we are focusing on mining our existing resources for silver medalists and rethink some preconceived notions about someone’s aptitude and potential for a role.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Roni has led Talent Acquisition teams at trendsetters and market leaders like ThoughtWorks and Amazon. She has a rare ability to get into the minutiae of data analytics and optimal structuring whilst also creating and innovating, as evidenced by her initiative of seeking professional athlete talent and launching internal recruiting upskilling programs at the likes of Amazon.

Their Unique Insights:
“We did a global roadshow and trained every single one of our staff in the exact same information on interview techniques, closing techniques and best practices. We wanted to arm all of our recruiters with the right tools to be successful.

We’ve implemented a candidate net promoter score at multiple stages of the interview process so candidate experience is very much a priority for us. We have a global data analyst just for Talent. Next step is to do predictive modeling. How many candidates coming into the funnel will make it to the other side?”

*Roni has since moved to Visa. Here she is primarily recognized for her work at ThoughtWorks.

Why They’re Awesome:
Punith brings a wealth of experience to PayPal and is approaching things very differently for such a large organization. From his commitment to leveraging technology at every stage of the process to investing in training tech talent, Punith is leading the tech charge.

Their Unique Insights:
“The overarching philosophy is to be more customer centric and provide an exceptional experience for all stakeholders – prospects, candidates, hiring managers, business and employees. As an example, we are partnering with Eightfold AI hiring platform, for candidate management (CRM) and we are among the first companies to deploy a CRM hiring platform for end to end hiring solutions from applicant tracking through identification of candidates for a role. This will provide – a) exceptional experience for end users (hiring managers, talent, employees, b) transparency in the process, c) increased hiring velocity, d) accountability and e) better candidate engagement.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Scott is a strategic leader who seeks out the tough challenges facing the talent market and aims to fix them. Scott has helped lead Asana to explosive growth and brings a level of self-awareness and conviction that is refreshing in leadership today.

Why They’re Awesome:
Brad is a dynamic leader who knows how to enact plans that get results. He has been a driving force behind the successful acceleration of Cybereason and his reach extends into employer branding with Cybereason’s Defenders campaign and employee retention, in the knowledge that Talent Acquisition cannot succeed in a silo.

Their Unique Insights:
“We’re spending a lot of our time now promoting what we’re doing, because while most of our competitors glorify the hackers we actually focus on the defenders.

The hacking stuff is cool but at the end of the day, hackers only have to be right once. Defenders have to be right every time. And that’s something that I think some people go, wow, I hadn’t thought about it that way. And that’s actually something I’d be really excited to be a part of.”

*Brad has since moved to Forcepoint. Here he is primarily recognized for his work at Cybereason.

Why They’re Awesome:
Leading tech talent at one of the most innovative and famously selective tech companies, Martin too is an innovator and holds himself to the same high talent bar Palantir sets as a company. This is exemplified by the launch of the Palantir Path program, a remarkably dedicated approach to de-biasing opportunity.

Their Unique Insights:
“Our three key priorities this year are centered around: being in touch with the market, matching the velocity at which Palantir wants to grow and making sure we invest in our recruiting team. I want to make sure our recruiters are growing; they’re taking on more ownership and not just putting bodies in seats.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Sasa is a capable leader who isn’t afraid of getting into multiple areas of Talent Acquisition to make the whole engine run smoothly. It’s no surprise Sasa has been able to accomplish so much in a short period of time at Momentive.ai.

Their Unique Insights:
“The time I had at Google earlier in my career really set me up to be the leader I am today. That experience totally changed how I worked with data, how I thought about data and how I influenced with data. If you’re not thinking about reporting and data, it’s a huge missed opportunity. It’s the biggest tool you have to inform, influence and drive change.”

Why They’re Awesome:
A well-versed tech Talent Acquisition leader with experience at many of the top brands in the world, Scott knows the importance of innovation and perhaps even more importantly, knowing when to double down on what’s working. A refreshingly humble leader, Scott is not only empathic but also a subscriber to continuous self-improvement.

Their Unique Insights:
“We get tons of referrals. And when we get referrals, people fundamentally believe that they’re great for Cloudflare and they are usually the low hanging fruit. We’ve been able to go even deeper by asking people to think beyond just the usual referrals; to be able to dig through and think about diversity when they’re referring. And that’s been yielding really good results for us.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Jeff is a warm, open leader who immediately puts people at eas after just a short conversation. Jeff’s infectious personality combined with his deep connections in Recruitment mean his impact is far-reaching.

Their Unique Insights:
“I think we’ve lost sight of this in the TA industry: switching jobs is stressful for people – it’s up there with getting married, buying a house. TA has become so mechanized and operationalized when you think about it, so operationally you’ve lost sight of the fact that you’re trying to talk someone through a major life decision. A lot of times we lose that piece of humanity in what we do and the experiences we want to deliver.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Yvette is the consummate modern-day leader, leveraging a number of valuable Talent Acquistion tech tools in her approach, whilst also really highlighting what it means to empower others and give them opportunities to shine.

Their Unique Insights:
“Another tool we just launched is Compa. I find this platform to be the most helpful when it comes to being transparent during the offer stage. It allows a better view of total compensation for the candidate as well as the recruiter. The data analytics in the backend offer insight into how competitive our offer is compared with competition and insight into how fair and equitable our offer is compared with our current team.

Total compensation is always a tough discussion if people do not understand it and we want to make sure people understand our offer; cash, benefits and equity before they decide to work with us.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Jessica is a leader who has mastered the ability to identify what’s truly scalable. Jessica keeps a keen eye on under-leveraged areas of Talent Acquisition, like the importance of storytelling, and cultivates her skills in these areas.

Their Unique Insights:
“We’re focused on leading with empathy, being helpful, and coaching our team. We offer interviewer skills training for everyone at Unite Us so that they are prepared, empowered and represent the company in the best light possible.

Important to remember is that candidates are interviewing us as much as we’re interviewing them, so we want to answer candidate questions and have an interview process that is helpful to their decision making process. Part of that is ensuring everything is timely. We strive to always follow up within 24 hours of an interview. We have very clear standards around communication as a team.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Jon is a memorable leader for his calming and friendly manner. With his ability to empathize and lead by example, it’s no surprise that Spotify was mentioned multiple times as an inspiration by other leaders who made the list.

Why They’re Awesome:
In everything Tricia does, she pushes the envelope just a bit beyond the norm. From leveraging private equity and VC firms to deconstructing and reverse engineering communication techniques, Tricia brings a wealth of creativity and ingenuity to Talent Acquisition.

Their Unique Insights:
“Each time you interact with a potential candidate or client, whether you are sending out an email/inmail, a job description, or a candidate introduction, you have a desired outcome. You want a specific response, you are never just relaying information. You really need to think about all of your written communication and design it to increase the likelihood of the response you’re looking for.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Danielle is a humble leader with a keen eye for finding (and creating) partnerships, best practices and task forces from under-the-radar sources of impact.

Their Unique Insights:
“We partnered with an external vendor called LifeLabs, and they’ve done some inclusion trainings with us, some fundamental kind of train the trainer, with both our team and the hiring managers around debiasing the process, structured interviewing, behavioral interviewing questions, all of the things to kind of set what right looks like.“

Why They’re Awesome:
Having led teams at Ceridian and now SmartRecruiters, Lehua is a huge influence on others in Talent and takes a technical, almost scientific, approach to analysing Talent Acquisition.

Their Unique Insights:
“By working with a company Ceridian acquired called Ideal, we were able to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that would assign candidates a grade and get smarter over time. We wanted to inverse the time relationship – focusing the time spent with the top 20%.”

*Lehua has since moved to SmartRecruiters. Here she is primarily recognized for her work at Ceridian.

Why They’re Awesome:
A thorough and mindful Talent Acquisition leader, Daniel is able to put himself in the shoes of employees and candidates to not only consider, but also act on, what he believes they would like to see at Genesys.

Their Unique Insights:
“It’s really about enablement. We invest time to ensure our managers are empowered to understand their role in hiring. Talent Acquisition is a team sport, it can’t be done in a vacuum. It’s important managers understand what we do, what they’re signed up to do, what the accountability levels are, what shared success looks like for us at Genesys and how we get there together as a team.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Daniel is a top tech talent veteran having led teams at Microsoft, Tableau and Starbucks. He is a influential leader who looks beyond why people want to work somewhere, into why they want to stay there and why they want to grow their career there.

Their Unique Insights:
“Nothing is above pulling it back down and re-architecting and reworking it. I think if people know that you’re constantly trying to make their jobs easier and more efficient, they’re going to be bought into doing whatever you have to do.“

Why They’re Awesome:
An articulate leader and veteran of Nike, Stefanie does a masterful job of employing the 80/20 rule and applying it to the world of global candidate experience standardization. Stefanie has been able to take leverage their stories of happy candidates and employees to further the Trimble brand, a true testament to the full-cycle impact of Talent Acquisition.

Their Unique Insights:
“People need to think about their own career journey and framework more like a rockwall. We traditionally think of our career as climbing a ladder, all about going up. Think of it more as a rockwall, those sideways moves that will get you to that next place even 5-10 years out because I still think about my formative experiences decades ago.“

Why They’re Awesome:
Neeta is a passionate TA leader who takes a data-driven approach to shaping structure and strategy. Neeta takes an open mindset to exploring new ideas and her commitment to organizational discovery is inspirational.

Their Unique Insights:
“One of the initial efforts that was critical for us in hyper-growth was to move the business from spreadsheets to implementing a headcount planning and management solution, instead of spending too much time reconciling sources of truth into a holistic view of our workforce. This initiative has tremendously helped us to ensure accountability and set up an audit mechanism that is helping with our QoQ improvements in hiring velocity, location strategy, hiring at scale and forward looking statements.”

Why They’re Awesome:
If most Talent Acquistion leaders consider five or six key areas of improvement, Jeremy takes on up to twelve. A veteran Talent Acquisition leader and board member of TALK, he drills into internal mobility and engagement surveys to ensure internal talent isn’t overlooked at Informatica.

Their Unique Insights:
“We do about 22% of our hiring through internal mobility. So this kind of gives the opportunity for employees from a retention standpoint to understand that there are a significant amount of opportunities here at Informatica that they can be considered for.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Kris is a leader who understands the importance of employees and company leaders living the culture being portrayed to candidates. Authenticity, consistency and adaptability are three of the core tenants of Kris’ leadership beliefs and style.

Their Unique Insights:
“I think a company really needs to figure out who they are, who they want to be, understand the market, and understand where they’re willing to be flexible in negotiations. This is all because it is a candidate market and a candidate has more options than ever before. And it’s not only the FAANGs of the world. There are so many other companies that are out there that are offering great benefits, great compensation, the opportunity for tremendous equity growth, and so what is your company doing to really stand out? How are you embodying that? How are you communicating that both externally and internally?”

*Kris has since moved to BeSpoke Financial. Here he is primarily recognized for his work at Verkada.

Why They’re Awesome:
Kimberly is a leader who leverages technology to further enable her team. She understands the importance of getting to the root of what drives human behavior and figures out how to drive people forward effectively.

Their Unique Insights:
“I always believe in having stay interviews: what motivates you? What makes you excited about work? What can we do to show we value you and your work?”

Why They’re Awesome:
Kan is one of the foremost recruitment innovation leaders. He has led Talent Acquisition teams at Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Square, Pinterest and now Robinhood, via his co-owned leadership position at former embedded recruitment provider, BINC.

Their Unique Insights:
“I believe the next IT is hiring for a culture of potential and then learning and development against that. I think the company that knows how to index on people development will flip the switch. Most companies right now are plug and play talent: we need to hire people with these skillsets because we have a deadline to hit this product launch and there’s a pressure to hire that. Once companies know the other version of hiring and can scientifically do it – it’s going to unlock their talent pool tremendously.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Anastacia is a master project designer and manager who knows how to deconstruct excellence in Talent Acquisition to make it tangible, measurable and digestible. Her ability to simplify and scale processes makes her a valuable resource for any successful tech organization.

Their Unique Insights:
“So something that I do when I initially come into organizations is listen. I will go on a listening tour of sorts, and my usual process is to just have one Google Doc to keep it all in one spot. And then usually I go with a project management approach…

What’s the highest priority? What’s being talked about the most? What’s visible? What’s going to be the highest lift, the lowest lift? Where do you have resources?”

*Anastacia has since moved to Snap. Here she is primarily recognized for her work at Guild.

Why They’re Awesome:
Kevin is a talent acquisition leader who knows it takes prioritization of key goals and clear communication to not only gain buy-in, but to deliver and overachieve on key metrics.

Their Unique Insights:
“Here we have clear alignment from leadership on down of what the overall priorities are and then everyone knows the priorities. We have four core priorities each year and then when we do quarterly planning everyone is aligned, and there’s clear accountability for each person that is stacked on top of each person. Recruiter has 100% responsibility, recruiting leader 100% responsibility, right on up to the CEO. When you stack that responsibility, you have 800% accountability as opposed to individualized splitting of the pie.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Jenna is a skilled networker who has an admirable approach to continuous improvement and seeking out additional perspectives.

Their Unique Insights:
“Doing employee surveys and engagement surveys and things like that to see where are the pain points and what can we do better? I think a lot of it really boils down to education and creating safe spaces for people to share and communicate and ask questions.

There are so many factors that people just don’t think about. And it’s important to really genuinely understand the full scope of what diversity actually means.”

Why They’re Awesome:
As Head of Talent Acquisition, Leah leads with compassion, empathy and has built a culture that centers around a common sense of inclusivity.

Their Unique Insights:
“There’s a talent shortage and maybe instead of overhiring and trying to get your pick of the litter, you have to invest in people that are here and give them the opportunity. Who do you have internally who’s ready for the next opportunity? It’s a little bit backwards thinking being in recruiting, but if you really nail internal mobility and have recruiting involved in the process, you can really succeed.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Katie is a compassionate leader who aims to unify and connect siloed groups. Katie has found ways to connect DE&I to company mission, as well as building a greater understanding across the organization of the intricacies and importance of Recruitment.

Their Unique Insights:
“In partnership with our ARGs (Affinity Resource Groups) and our passion for health equity, we blend DE&I into all the work we do for our teammates and the patients we serve. By creating an inclusive environment for all employees, we are impacting the broader healthcare industry and society. During the recruitment process, we are transparent about our culture. When a candidate connects with our culture and when they become an employee, they can bring their authentic selves to work and feel a sense of belonging”

Why They’re Awesome:
A versatile and experienced leader, Brent focuses on developing and upskilling talent. He has a dedicated vision and surrounds himself with talented individuals that he can further enable and empower.

Their Unique Insights:
“Ensure that you’re not the person that’s driving everything; give off a lot. That’s a big piece of it – to ensure that your team has the responsibility to make decisions.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Sean is a driven leader who is motivated by the value the DailyPay brand has to offer not only his employees, but also his clients and the broader ways in which we all work. Sean understands the wealth of insights in employee surveys, technologies and trainings and how to maximize their reach.

Their Unique Insights:
“If you’re not doing employee engagement surveys, you’re doing yourself a disservice because that’s where you’re going to find out quite a bit of information about how well you’re doing.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Ahmed is an experienced leader with a wealth of motivating ideas on how Talent Acquisition needs to respect and assert itself, as well as on how companies need to capitalize on the rapidly changing talent landscape.

Their Unique Insights:
“TA is always underestimated; don’t think that your job is not important. It’s super important. You are responsible for bringing new talent. You’re responsible for the growth of the company. That’s careers that you’ve changed, lives that you change, organizations that you change.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Lori is a compassionate, forward-thinking leader who is on the precipice of launching some truly innovative and differentiated thought leadership.

Their Unique Insights:
“What we really look forward to and look 18 and 24 months out is: how can we be more progressive in the benefits we offer? What can we do that no one else is doing? We all have the Zoom happy hours that we’re tired of, it’s about doing things differently, how can we stand out? We’re looking to be futuristic, we’re always looking at new ways to engage our employees.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Ryan invests in people. In everything he does, there’s a human approach that goes beyond the surface and seeks to connect with people on an individual level.

Their Unique Insights:
“But one of the other things that we’ve done is we’re really focused on and are starting to build out our partnerships to help drive some of the skills gaps and some of the talent gaps that we’re seeing in the market and how we can kind of bridge that. We’re working on different initiatives like how to do well in hacker ranks, how to ace technical interviews, how to talk about your transferable skills.”

Why They’re Awesome:
Susan is a leader who understands and embodies the value of teamwork. From her partnerships with PowertoFly to her consistency in working with the same tried and tested teams over time, Susan knows the importance of leveraging reliable resources.

Their Unique Insights:
“We did go live with RepVue, too, which is the new GlassDoor for Sales. The nice thing is they’ve been training my team, and we’ve done several different enablement sessions on how to use that data competitively. It helps us keep our offer acceptance rates at 89% this year for Sales. We understand how to sell the Elastic story over our competitors with feedback from our enterprise and commercial sellers on RepVue. That’s been really empowering. Our close rates are about 89% to 95% given the business unit. So we still have a really strong negotiation close ratio, even though we’re not the golden pre-IPO company.”