2023 Speakers

Photo of Lauren Berger

Lauren Berger

Senior Manager, University Relations & DEI Recruiting,
Roku
Lauren Berger is the Senior Manager of University Recruiting and Inclusion Strategy at Roku. She supports a small but mighty team of University Recruiters, Coordinators, and Inclusion Recruiting Program Managers. She’s passionate about challenging the misconceptions of entry level talent and prioritizing an equitable candidate experience on a global scale. She's a proud graduate of Boston University and happily resides in San Jose with her husband, and two rescued furbabies, Winnifred and Cordelia.
 
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Katelyn Peker

Global Head of Campus Recruiting,
MongoDB

Katelyn has been working within campus recruiting for the last 11 years. She currently leads the Global Campus Recruiting Team at MongoDB, which hires Software Engineering Interns, New Grad and Sales Academy positions. Our MongoDB campus team hires over 150 global Interns as well as 140 entry level positions.

Prior to joining MongoDB, Katelyn lead Protiviti's Global Technology Consulting, Business Performance Improvement and Digital campus recruiting efforts. She also lead Protiviti's Northeast Region Campus hiring team which included Toronto, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Metro DC offices.

Katelyn loves working in a team environment and brainstorming around strategy to come up with innovative solutions to bring campus recruiting to the next level. She has a passion for technology and streamlining processes to simplify to scale.

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Deitrick Franklin

University Recruiting Program Manager,
Reddit

Deitrick Franklin is an Engineer, Program Manager, Recruiter, Mentor and DEI Advocate. As a University Recruiting Program Manager for Reddit, he is developing foundational structure, processes, and programming that seeks to attract and retain exceptional and diverse early talent professionals into opportunities. He currently creates inclusive recruiting experiences for both tech & business roles, such as Software Engineering, Data Science, Communications, Marketing, Sales & Account Management and more. Prior to Reddit, he worked as an Early Talent PM at Lyft to ensure an excellent employee experience for incoming Apprentices, Interns & New Grads. His focus included engagement and retention strategies that aimed to convert 100% of the participants in Lyft’s Early Talent Programs into full-time opportunities. Deitrick proactively engages underrepresented / underserved communities in tech, particularly Black, Latinx, and Women, to inform & encourage them to apply for high paying opportunities. As a former engineer who broke into the tech industry, he strongly believes in diversity, equity and inclusion and strives to help others see that #YouBelong. Deitrick is a native of Baltimore, MD, who received his B.S. (2012) and M.S. (2014) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and Georgia Institute of Technology, respectively. In his spare time, Deitrick enjoys traveling, playing billiards, and making people laugh! If you’d like, please connect with Deitrick Franklin on LinkedIn!

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Alison Rivera

Associate Director, Early Career Programs,
SiriusXM

Alison is theAssociate Director, Early Career Programs at SiriusXM. In her role at SiriusXM, Alison is responsible for overseeing the internship program that runs year-around and hires approximately 250 students per year in all departments of the business. She also oversees the Demo Tape apprentice program. Prior to this role, Alison worked in higher education as a career counselor where she counseled undergraduate and graduate students on selecting a major, exploring careers, and in all aspects of the job and internship search process. She holds a master’s in Counseling & Counselor Education from Indiana University Bloomington and a BA in Psychology from University of Richmond.

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Leo Cortez

Head of Global Emerging Talent,
Hubspot

Cortez is a university relations and human resources professional who has been working with Silicon Valley powerhouses for 19 years. He has served as a university relations and human resources leader for several organizations, including Hubspot, Airbnb, Zynga, Workday, Ericsson, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems. He currently leads the University Recruiting team at Airbnb, positioning the program to be best-in-class and expanding programing in the areas of early career.  Prior to his roles in the high tech industry, Cortez, built his experiences in the education sector as a teacher and administrator for both K-8 and High School.  This blend of education and high tech provides Cortez with a unique perspective to innovate and l lead his teams.

Cortez was born in Mexico; moved to the United States at the age of 10 and began working in California agriculture until he was 20 years old.  He received Bachelor’s Degrees in History and Political Science and a Master of Arts in Education Administration and Supervision from San Jose State University and a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University.

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Cat Pedersen

Sr. Early Career Talent Specialist,
CDK Global
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Stephanie Tyler

Global Head of Early Career Talent,
Autodesk

Stephanie has over 15 years of experience launching, scaling and maturing early career strategies and talent acquisition programs. Currently she runs a global UR team at Autodesk and manages TA programs and enablement. With a growth mindset, she is passionate about her team and constantly innovating. Previosuly as National Director of Campus Recruiting, at BDO USA, LLP Stephanie has developed and scaled a best-in-class campus recruiting strategy during a time of rapid firm growth. With a streamlined, digitally enabled approach focused on candidate care, Stephanie and her team hired more than 1500 students last year from some of the best colleges and universities in the country. With more than 15 years of recruiting experience, Stephanie is a thought-provoking speaker on many issues in the workplace, including multi-generational trends in the workplace, digital marketing, university recruiting strategies and the college-to-career transition.

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Lucy Tobias

Head of Emerging Talent,
Dropbox

Lucy currently leads the Emerging Talent team at Dropbox. Lucy has been in the early career space for over a decade, but has committed to finding talent for Dropbox since 2017. Since her days of wanting to be a student counselor, she's always found early career recruiting and building early career programs a true passion of hers. One of the most fulfilling parts of Lucy's role today is being able to be a part of someone's career journey and watch them grow in their success!

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Emma Surich

Head of Talent Acquisition,
Perpetua Labs

Emma Surich has recently joined Perpetua Labs as their Head of TA and previously was with ecobee as Manager, Recruitment helping to grow ecobee from 125 to just over 500, and building ecobee’s campus recruitment and new graduate program to 30 students per term. With a focus on great candidate experience and a strong employer brand. Emma has been involved in early talent recruitment over the last 10 years and loves to see a co-op students and new grads bring their curiosity and drive to teams.

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Char Delapena

Managing Director, URx,
Sr. Manager, Early Talent - Ripple

Charlene (Char) Delapena is the Sr. Manager, Early Talent at Ripple. and the Managing Director for URx, a community for University Recruiting and Early Talent professionals. Leading the early talent recruiting efforts for Ripple, she is responsible for executing strategies designed to attract early career talent across the organization while managing programs focused on providing real life work experiences and mentorship to ensure career success. Char is also passionate about diversity & inclusion and makes it a priority to not only increase the diversity within pipelines but encourages an inclusive environment for early career talent to excel in and feel a sense of belonging. Char has spent nearly 10 years within the university and emerging talent recruiting space managing programs at BitGo, Robinhood, Quora, Coinbase and Dolby Laboratories and holds a Bachelors degree in Telecommunications from DeVry University.

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Brittany Mitlo

UR Manager,
Duolingo

Brittany Mitlo is a UR Manager at Duolingo who has helped the company's 5x growth since joining in 2017. Brittany has prior experience in 3rd party recruiting (aka headhunting) and higher education (hail to Pitt!). Brittany enjoys laughing with her team, embarrassing karaoke moments, and endless cups of coffee.

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Jessica Hernandez

University Recruiting & Programs,
Airbnb
In my current role at Airbnb, I manage our Summer Intern Program and new grad engagement and support the recruitment and hiring of intern and new grad candidates. Additionally, I am a Global Lead for Juntos, Airbnb's employee resource group for Latinx/Hispanic employees. Prior to joining Airbnb, I worked in the education/non-profit sector. I was a high school special education teacher in Chicago before making the switch to recruiting teachers. I care deeply about increasing opportunities for underrepresented groups and use my background to to create talent programs focused on diversity and inclusion.
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Sam Lee

Early Talent Recruiter,
ZipRecruiter

Sam is a former accountant turned University Recruiter at ZipRecruiter and formerly at Bitgo & Robinhood. She is a member of the URx team. In addition to full cycle technical recruiting and strengthening the team's diversity efforts and partnerships, she is utilizing her accounting background by focusing on all things data and metrics. She kicked off her university recruiting career three years ago as a Recruiting Coordinator at Coinbase, eventually expanding her role to include building out the program for interns and new grads.

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Michelle Carrega

Sr. Manager,
Emerging Talent Programs
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Sarah Hester

PhD Recruiter,
Meta

Sarah has been in the early career space for almost a decade touching every stage of the process from sourcing, closing, strategy, programming, intern management, and events.  She is currently a University Talent Scout at Meta focusing on the Front End pipeline, though throughout her career has worked on roles from hardware to front end engineering roles. Sarah was first introduced to the early career space at Microsoft where she led their intern programming. She spent the bulk of her career as a full cycle recruiter at Redfin, positioning Redfin as a competitive force in the industry. Right before joining Meta she spent a year at Rockwell Automation helping their UR program update their recruiting philosophies and transition their strategy from local to nationwide recruiting efforts.  Sarah is most passionate about equipping all students with the skills and information they need to navigate the recruiting system and land  their dream opportunity. 

For last year, Sarah has been involved with the URx team helping put together conferences and marketing.

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Mathew Stowe

Director of Student Programs,
San Jose State University
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Bridget LeMon

Global Emerging Talent Recruiting Manager,
HubSpot

Bridget is an experienced University Recruiting professional focused on building out HubSpot's intern, co-op, and entry-level programs. Having started her career in the not-for-profit government sector before transitioning into tech, she has developed and led innovative university talent strategies tailored to the needs of organizations that are both high-growth and mission-driven.

Over the past 5.5 years Bridget has been at HubSpot, the student programs have grown and scaled significantly. Focused on inclusivity at every level of the programming she and her team run, Bridget is passionate about creating communities where everyone belongs and is empowered to do their best work.

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Jane Lim

Manager, UR & Recruitment Marketing,
Bell Textron, Inc.
Photo of Juan Acosta

Juan Acosta

Senior Recruiter,
Puget Sound Energy
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Caroline Cunningham

Global Early Talent Leader

Caroline Cunningham is a Global Early Talent Acquisition Leader with over 20 years of experience in multiple Fortune 500 companies. Having just left Workday as the Director of Global Early Talent Acquisition and Programs, she is currently taking some time off and exploring options for her next adventure. Prior to Workday, Caroline held Early TA leadership roles at Intuit, GE Digital, and Chevron as well as managing both early talent and experienced hiring for a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Caroline is an active member of NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) and has served two terms on the NACE Board of Directors as the VP Employers and as an Employer Director. She has presented at several national and regional conferences and events on a variety of topics related to early talent recruiting and programs.

In her spare time, Caroline explores her love of family, food and cooking in her blog, Findingcaroly.com. She lives in Danville, CA with her husband Rob and daughters Morgan (20) and Kendall (19).

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Jason Lu

Early Career Recruiter,
Autodesk
Jason kicked off his HR career  after graduating from Cal Poly - SLO, as a People Coordinator at Jobvite where he eventually found his passion to work in the University Recruiting space. Now part of the UR team at Autodesk, he focuses on hiring and building out programs for early career talent on their tech teams. 
 
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Carolynn Choi

Early Career Recruiter,
Figma

Carolynn is invested in fostering authentic relationships with early career talent from start to finish. Previously Carolynn was a university technical recruiter at Square, Carolynn hires interns and new grads across multiple offices and executes programming to grow the employer brand among students. She's focused on finding new ways to enhance early career programs and elevate its value to businesses during this time.

Outside of recruiting, Carolynn has hosted events for Tech Ladies, a global community that connects 100k+ women to the best opportunities in tech. She is also a member of the NYU Alumni Association Board of Directors, where she helps develop strategies towards the advancement of NYU and its alumni.

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Monica Ipong

Director, Global UR,
Crowdstrike
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Andrew Gonzalez

Program Manager, Talent Programs & Partnerships,
Sigma Computing

Andrew is the University Recruiting Program Manager at Sigma Computing. Previously spearheaded university relations and recruiting partnerships as a Program Manager at Jam City, a mobile game publisher based out of Los Angeles, Andrew has spent the last 6 years at the intersection of entertainment and tech. His passion for representation in tech comes from his personal upbringing in a Mexican-American home and in his experiences in being the first person from his family to work in a corporate role. Prior to joining Jam City, Andrew spent time recruiting at EA (Electronic Arts), Netflix, and Apple. He recently made the move to San Diego and is excited to try all the new restaurants and continue building community in the industry.

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Wahab Owolabi

Founder,
OneReq & URx

Wahab Owolabi is the Founder of OneReq & Producer of the URx Conference. He was been a DEI Lead at Facebook supporting teams accross Policy, Legal, & Recruiting. Previously, Wahab built the University Recruiting and Talent Programs function at Rubrik. Rubrik became an employer of choice amongst top engineering students and ranked in the top 10 of Linkedin's Career Launching Startups. Prior to Rubrik, Wahab was a Talent Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, building a network of top university talent and supporting portfolio company recruiting efforts. Previously, Wahab worked at both Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University helping technology companies recruit university talent and helping students launch amazing technical careers.  Wahab is also on the Board of ColorStack a non-profit organization that promotes the advancement of underrepresented college CS students.