2019 Speakers

A passionate champion for equity and inclusion at all levels of an organization. Angela leads the efforts to grow and nurture a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Riot Games. An accomplished executive with more than 20 years of human resource experience leading diversity and inclusion, talent management, and leadership development initiatives for several Fortune 500 companies including T. Rowe Price, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Whirlpool Corporation. As a member of senior leadership teams, she has developed and implemented global diversity strategies that have resulted in increased ethnic and gender representation at both leadership and pipeline levels, boosted employee engagement, upped leadership accountability, and increased spend - ing with diverse suppliers. She has received recognition from DiversityInc. com, Diversity Best Practices, Black Enterprise, and Diversity MBA. She was named to the Network Journal list of 25 Influential Black Women in Business in 2013.

Steven Huang left his career as an actuary to join Facebook as their first HR analyst. As an early pioneer of bringing advanced quantitative discipline to the HR field, he built the people analytics strategies at both Facebook and Square. He has become a champion of using data modeling to solve HR's most pressing problems. Steven joined Culture Amp, an employee feedback platform, as an early employee in 2015 to advise customers on a wide range of topics including organizational design, performance management strategies, and talent acquisition metrics.

He currently holds the position of Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Culture Amp. He has designed and deployed an internal D&I function, as well as open-source tools to contribute to the D&I movement, such as the Culture Amp and Paradigm Inclusion Survey. He has a B.S. in Business from Babson College.

Stella is the Founder and CEO of rising ed-tech venture, WeSolv, in addition to serving as an advisor on workforce & diversity strategy for leading organizations. Stella maintains an unwavering focus on customer and user acquisition via value creation, a strategy she applies to WeSolv and client engagements. 

Stella has 10+ years of experience in business growth strategy, business development, and operations. Her industry/category specialties span the financial services, technology, education, and heavy manufacturing & utility industries.

Stella holds a BS in Political Science and emphasis in Accounting from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and graduated among the top of her class from the Full-Time MBA Program at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

Mikaela joined Kiewit Corporation just over 7 years ago, and in that time, she has taken on the responsibility of two key HR leadership roles. One as the Senior HR Manager for a division based out of Dallas, TX, and the other being the role she is currently in overseeing all University Recruiting & Relations for Kiewit. With the transition from a decentralized HR model to a centralized HR model, this role is the first of its kind for the company, and she has been more than successful in the challenges that have faced her in this role. Her team is directly responsible for all of the New Grad and Intern hiring, which is over 1,300 hires across the US and Canada per year. She has been able to decrease the cost of travel on her team by 19% as well as Cost per Hire down by 10% . This is through leveraging analytics to tell a story and driving for overall efficiency in our selection process. To manage an operation of this size with efficiency and great quality is not easy, and Mikaela has been able to accomplish both. Her leadership, not only of her team, but her peers and managers, has led to lower turnover and growing early career personal to have a greater impact to the organization. She continuously coaches her team on how to grow personally and professionally in their career. Many of her employees said that their reviews and coaching moments are the best they have had, and that Mikaela truly cares about them as people and employees. Throughout her career, the road has always led back to Recruiting. She is truly passionate about the ability to identify and select top talent for her organization that not only aligns with the culture but that will also be able to contribute immediately to their team.

Donna Ganske is currently the Recruiting & Systems Lead managing recruiting technology and analytics for Talent Acquisition & Attraction at Kiewit. She also oversees Kiewit’s University Recruiting team in Canada.  In these roles, she is able to bring various aspects of recruiting together to give insight and initiate forward-thinking and innovative business decisions. Prior to her current role, Donna worked as a University Recruiter allowing for hands on experience that gives context to improving processes and analytics. With her passion for recruiting and data, she believes that there is no problem so big that can’t be tackled with the right team and insight.

Kaci Kelly works for the Center for Career Development at the University of Notre Dame as the Talent and Employer Engagement Manager for California. She currently resides in Los Angeles and builds relationships with California employers to inform Notre Dame students of the amazing opportunities throughout the state, and to help students line up their internships and full time jobs.

Kaci received her B.S in Business Administration (Management) from California State University San Marcos, and her M.A in Management from the University of Redlands. Kaci spent six years working in industry for Northrop Grumman in San Diego where she provided logistical support for an unmanned surveillance aircraft, and worked in a project management role focusing her activities on engagement, staffing, onboarding, and operations as the Enterprise Integration Lead for the Common Mission Management System (CMMS) Enterprise.
​
Kaci grew up in Southern California with a family who loves the mission and vision of the University of Notre Dame! A Notre Dame football game is never missed in the Kelly Household! Her enthusiasm and passion for building relationships continues to be a common theme throughout her life as she loves to surround herself with family, friends, and colleagues. Kaci believes that opportunities in life are endless and that you create your own destiny!

Benjamin leads the University Talent Program at Juniper Networks. He joined the company as a new college grad after completing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford. He started as an engineer in routing protocols, then as engineering program manager served globally across the software development groups. Eventually, his passion for people and culture led him to make the switch to HR. Benjamin has been recognized at the company level for his work in unleashing talent through cross-functional initiatives.

Steve Scordo serves as GW's Center for Career Services Employer Development Consultant working directly with top employers seeking to recruit from GWU. Steve has over 17 years of experience building university-wide employer partnerships having previously worked at the University of Phoenix and the University of Maryland. Steve holds a bachelor's degree from James Madison University.

As an experienced HR professional, Melisa Thomson is currently the Senior Manager of Employee Engagement on CBS' Learning & Development Team for the Interactive (Tech) Division. She loves applying her knowledge and skill-sets to create and implement high-impact growth programs. Prior to her current role, Melisa worked as CBS' University Relations & Diversity Program Manager, where she was a key member on a dynamic Talent Acquisition and Human Resources team, providing overall leadership to the company's internship program, diversity initiatives, employee resource groups, corporate social responsibility, and company culture.

Geni Harclerode is the Director of Employer Recruitment and Engagement for Northwestern University’s office of Career Advancement. In this role she leads employer development strategy and oversees the Employer and Strategic Outreach Team. Her team manages a portfolio of thousands of organizations spanning diverse industries and experience needs. Geni has been in career services and employer relations management for 15 years and has contributed to conversation on early career development in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, US News and World Report and CNBC. Prior to Northwestern, Geni was the Assistant Director of Experiential Learning and Employer Development for the University of Michigan’s University Career Services.Geni has previously served as the Vice Chair for the Hire Big Ten Plus Consortium, and currently chairs their Employer Relations Knowledge Community. She is a past presenter at National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), Midwest Association of Colleges and Employers (MwACE), and the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). She taught graduate courses at Eastern Michigan University's Higher Education and Student Affairs program. Geni holds a BA in Women’s Studies and an MA Higher Education Administration, both from the University of Michigan.

Dara Patton is the Associate Director of Employer Relations at the University of California, Berkeley Career Center and has worked at the Career Center for 20 years.  She manages the 7-person employer relations team which includes oversight of all employer recruiting services, including on-campus interviews, career fairs, the Berkeley Circle Employer Partnership program, the Handshake career management system, and a wide variety of other employer and alumni engagement programs.  A significant portion of her time is spent consulting with employers about optimal strategies for building their brand on campus. Prior to joining the Employer Relations team in 2011 Dara was Assistant Director for Counseling, providing guidance and programming for students pursuing business-related careers.  Before starting her career in higher education, Dara worked in Human Resources development for a manufacturing company and as a recruiter and account executive for a technical staffing agency. Dara has a MS in Counseling from San Francisco State University and BA in Psychology from UC Irvine.

Jeffrey Moss is the Founder and CEO of Parker Dewey LLC, a company focused on addressing the challenges associated with college-to-career transitions through Micro-Internships. Prior to founding Parker Dewey, Jeffrey spent most of his career as a venture capital investor focusing on the education and technology sectors. In addition, Jeffrey was Chief of Enterprise Growth at Educational Testing Service (ETS) where his efforts focused on the use of assessment to drive equity in education and employment. Jeffrey currently serves on the Indiana University Kelley School of Business Alumni Board and the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts Dean's Advisory Council.  Jeffrey's other relevant Board responsibilities have included: Chairman of the Board of Workstream (Nasdaq: WSTM), a software provider for human resources departments; OneGoal, a non-profit focused on college accessibility and persistence; the Chicago American Marketing Association; and the Illinois Venture Capital Association.

Buddy has been at Quicken Loans since 2015 within the talent acquisition team. He spent his first year
with the company as a recruiter where he recruited for multiple types of full time roles as well as
internships. Over the past three years, Buddy has focused in the university space and building
relationships with colleges and universities. While building these relationships, he has worked to identify
top talent within the various universities to bring back to Quicken Loans. Currently, he primarily works
with schools in the Metro Detroit and Northern Michigan areas as well as Ivy League hiring efforts.
Buddy is the 2018 recipient of the Don Hunt Service Award. Which recognizes a member of the Michigan
Co-op and/or Internship community for significant contributions in promoting and sustaining the
cooperative education and internship philosophy in Michigan.

Jessica began her career with Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans 4 years ago as an Intern. Her background is in Training and Development but she has spent the majority of her career in the University Talent Programming space – building out internship programs and externships. She specializes in building relationships with candidates from programs like the Quicken Loans Family of Companies Winternship, engaging them pre, during, and post externship by facilitating business area and mentor match-ups, professional development opportunities, networking events, exposure to the city of Detroit, and then retaining this talent for future internships or full-time employment. Jessica has launched many successful Internship initiatives such as a Ted Talk platform for our Interns, improv-based public speaking workshops, and our first Technology Internship Program that creates a future full-time pipeline for Software Developers and Engineers. She is an avid goal setter, loves her dogs (both named Cooper), and she has a weakness for sweet potatoe fries and pizza.

Engaging college students early on in their career path is a core objective of many HR Departments. Adam will talk about little-known tips top internship programs are using for their Student Ambassador Programs, including how to change the traditional process for finding student ambassadors, keeping them motivated for consistent results, and how to apply solutions internally without added costs. His client work has yielded impressive success, including a record breaking amount of applicants for Volkswagen Grad Program and helping a Fortune 50 beverage company reduce costs by $200K while increasing student reach by 50%. His tips have been captured in Forbes, Inc, and Huffington Post, and they will work for you!

With over 10 years of experience working in the technology, higher education, and psychotherapy sectors, Sirrah continues to pursue her passion for people and creating a more inclusive tech space. At Square, she has worked in campus recruiting for three years, while also serving in Employee Resource Group leadership for Women@Square, Black Squares Association and Veterans@Square.

Staci Fowler serves as GW's Center for Career Services Managing Director of Employer Services and lends support in attracting top employers to recruit from GW and building university-wide employer partnerships. Staci has nearly 20 years of experience in higher education, marketing, communications, and recruitment at organizations such as Bloomberg L.P., Northrop Grumman, PBS, and the U.S. Department of Energy. While at PBS, Staci teamed with the White House press staff for President Obama’s Educate to Innovate STEM program. Staci holds a master's degree from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.

Doug Dean is Partner and Creative Director of Wall-to-Wall Studios, where he shares the belief that an emotional connection can become the currency of the challenger brand. In addition to building brands, Doug keeps himself busy doing work for the music industry by designing albums for Warner Brother Records, Republic Records, BMG and more. Doug’s work has been recognized by Graphis, Communication Arts, Print Regional, CASE Circle of Excellence, ADDYs and AIGA.

Mike Kozak is Director of Digital Strategy at Wall-to-Wall Studios where he works to bring brands to life in the digital space through compelling experiences. Mike has worked with clients across industries, including higher education, tech, nonprofits, B2B and more. 

Tigran Sloyan is the CEO of CodeSignal, an automated-technical assessment platform that enables large and small companies to go beyond resumes and evaluate engineering candidates based on their skills and not the school they went to or the companies they’ve worked at.

Tigran is also the founder of the #GoBeyondResumes movement that brings together engineering, recruiting and career services leaders to create a mindset shift in the industry about how we approach recruiting and how we measure talent. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of education, assessment and recruiting and how these industries interact and influence each other.

Tigran holds bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science and Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T) and has previously worked in Product Management and Engineering roles at companies like Google and Oracle. Between 2003 and 2007, Tigran was awarded 5 medals at the prestigious International Mathematics Olympiad that brings together more than 500 top young mathematicians from all over the world.

Gaurav Verma leads Customer Success at HackerRank. Throughout his career, Gaurav has held leadership roles in enterprise software companies including product planning and management, marketing performance management, brand strategy, persona-based marketing for products and industry solutions, marketing communications, demand generation, sales and partner enablement and competitive analysis. Gaurav regularly serves as a spokesperson to press, analyst communities and at industry events. He has authored several articles and is quoted in leading industry publications.

With 10+ years of experience advising and coaching young people in the university space, Kelly now serves as the University Relations Lead for one of North America’s largest construction and engineering companies. In this role she collaborates with recruiters and senior operations leaders to create strategic university relationships.  Becoming an employer of choice in a competitive market demands relationships with students and university leadership of depth and quality. The demand for talent must incorporate an awareness of the educational needs of faculty and students. With over 150 university partners and 30+ business units, Kelly has successfully utilized analytics to streamline campus relationships across the business, restructure corporate funding for university programs, and drive the organization to engage with new programs of mutual benefit to the university and recruiting.

Naomi Thalenberg is the brand manager of SAP’s global, signature internship program, SAP Internship Experience Project.  After studying journalism and multimedia storytelling in her undergraduate studies, she began her career as an editorial assistant in Seattle and has since owned content channels for startup, higher education, and enterprise organizations. She’s passionate about the future of storytelling, all things content strategy, and most recently graduated from the University of Washington’s Communication Leadership program. When she’s not helping recruit the next generation of SAP’s global talent, she’s either hiking or backpacking in the Pacific Northwest.

Jason Weingarten is the co-founder and CEO of Yello, a talent acquisition platform built for enterprise and fast-growing recruiting teams to strengthen employer brand, drive hard cost savings and maximize ROI. Weingarten’s vision for reinventing the way enterprise companies acquire top talent has helped Yello grow an impressive client roster; the software powers recruitment initiatives for hundreds of the world’s leading brands. Weingarten and co-founder Dan Bartfield previously founded a company to help college students find jobs online, which was sold in 2008. Weingarten’s serial entrepreneurship and business savvy has been noticed by investors, with funding rounds exceeding $46M, led by investors JMI Equity, First Analysis and Argentum.

Liz Wessel is the Co-Founder and CEO of WayUp, the go-to platform for millions of early-career professionals to explore opportunities, receive advice, and get discovered by employers. Liz has been featured as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 and named one of the 18 Coolest Women in Silicon Valley.

Garrett Lord is the co-founder and CEO of Handshake, the leading college-to-career network helping today's students launch meaningful careers. Handshake aims to democratize opportunity for all students - no matter where they go to school, what they major in, or who they know. While a student at Michigan Tech, Garrett gained experience at both Los Alamos National Labs and Palantir. In 2014, Garrett and his fellow classmates launched Handshake. Today, the Handshake community helps 10 million students and young alumni from 700+ universities connect with 250,000 employers nationwide - including 100% of Fortune 500. Garrett is a Detroit area native and current San Francisco resident.

Corey Twitty is the Head of Emerging Talent at Netflix. Formerly, Corey worked at Lyft Recruiting as well a Talent Acquisition Manager at Intuit, where he leads University Recruiting for all business roles. During his time at Intuit, he has worked to champion diversity and currently facilitates workshops across the company on what it means to lead inclusively. Before joining Intuit, Corey spent 8 years at Target Corp. He began his career in their Global Sourcing Department as a Business Analyst where he acted as the liaison between Target and overseas vendors. Soon after, he transitioned into Talent Acquisition where he found his true passion of University Recruiting. During his tenure on the team, he built long lasting diversity programs, and was critical in scaling the team’s growth. Corey attended Connecticut College (Go Camels!) and graduated with a degree in Sociology based Human Relations.

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).

Jamie Lewis leads early career programs at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative where she's focused on building processes and programs that create equity, access and opportunity for individuals starting their career journey. She has held other senior roles in the university recruiting space at places like Facebook, Qualcomm, and Aramark which have been recognized for having best in class internship programs. Jamie holds a BS/BA in Business and Psychology from North Carolina State University.

Paul Sledd is a recruiting and human resources leader whose experience spans three Fortune 50s, two start-ups, and currently BCG Digital Ventures. Throughout the journey, his most significant impact occurred in university recruiting, cultural programs, and buildouts for experienced sourcing, recruiting, and research teams. Paul is a technology enthusiast with interests in software, hardware, manufacturing, and data science, yet his favorite combination of all of these is the humble pinball machine.

Anthony is energized by two things, about equally: The tech industry, and recruiting fantastic talent. He loves finding the very best people and watching them change the world everyday. Anthony currently leads talent at Karat, a startup with a mission to engineer the world's most predictive technical interview, and use it to remove bias from the hiring process. Prior to Karat, he recruited early career talent at Microsoft, owning a broad range of university relationships (CMU, Berkeley, UCSD, Duke, among several others).  Anthony’s passion for the HR and Talent space emerged through studying Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University - after which he spent several years solving complex labor and employment relations challenges at one of the nation's largest transportation companies.  When he’s not busy recruiting (as if that ever stops), Anthony lives on a micro-farm just east of Seattle with his partner, three kids, and two adorable pups. 

Colleen is a Recruiter at Thumbtack, recruiting for the G&A and Software Engineering teams. She built Thumbtack’s University Recruiting Program from ground up, hiring over 65 New Grads and Interns and earning the program the #2 spot on Forbes’, “6 Awesome Tech Companies to Intern For—According to Interns Themselves.” She learned the grit, scrappiness, and self-discipline necessary to be successful in the industry from her internship and mentor at Nest (then a stealth-mode startup), and shown what it takes to on-board stakeholders and streamline hiring process at Apple. She’s looking forward to sharing her learnings and experiences with you!

I’m a PNW native that’s passionate about coffee, inclusion, travel, and politics. I’m currently at Microsoft where I’ve had the incredible opportunity to manage a team of campus recruiters for the past few years. We’re focused on hiring diverse talent from universities across North and South America that will help Microsoft empower the world through our products and services. Prior to returning to Microsoft as a boomerang, I managed a team of industry recruiters for Amazon’s Worldwide Advertising team. That said, I’ve always had a passion for university recruiting and I love utilizing my platform to support the non-traditional candidate, the underdog, and those that don’t think they can work at a big company like Microsoft or Amazon. Shout-out to all of the road warriors, passionate recruiters, and incredible people working in talent acquisition.

Currently leading the University Recruiting Team at Quora and was previously at Coursera, where she discovered her passion for connecting early career talent with amazing technical opportunities. She leverages data to inform her campus recruiting strategies and is continually looking for opportunities to improve recruiting processes to ensure excellent candidate experience. Outside of work she is mastering the art of parenthood and enjoys discovering new cultures and languages through travel.

Former elementary school teacher turned lawyer turned university recruiter, has turned his experience into driving large, scalable university programs in an innovative and inclusive manner into a passion - from creating software engineering apprenticeship programs at both Uber and Lyft to finding new ways to partner with universities like HBCU's & HSI's that bring the world's best and diverse early career talent to the ride-sharing industry.

Lauren started her career in athletic sales which led her to student coaching and found her way to university recruiting. Lauren's passion for student and program development helped her cultivate programs at Zendesk. She developed and continues to grow the Zendesk university program globally.

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.

Tarsha McCormick is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion for ThoughtWorks North America. Tarsha joined ThoughtWorks in January of 1999 as a Recruiting Specialist when the company was a small startup with a group of less than 100. Today ThoughtWorks has grown to over 3500 employees globally in 34 offices spread across 13 countries on 6 continents.

She was instrumental in helping to build, grow, and lead various aspects of their People organization including recruiting, benefits, HR operations, and talent management. Since moving into the Head of Diversity and Inclusion role in January 2015, Tarsha is responsible for driving the strategic thinking and work related to making ThoughtWorks more diverse and inclusive, and advocating for change in the I.T. industry.

After earning a B.A. in Political Science from Illinois State University, Tarsha worked in the social services industry for 4 years before making a transition into human resources, which married her love of people, law, and education. In addition to her 18 years of human resources experience, she holds an MBA with a focus on Human Resources Management. Born and raised in Chicago, she has called Atlanta home since 2010.