The HigherHer Podcast (Talent Collective)

In this episode, Tina Cella, a seasoned talent acquisition expert and founder of Unicorn Career Compass, shares her journey from overcoming personal challenges to helping others find fulfilling careers. She emphasizes the importance of mindset, self-care, and the role of mentorship in professional growth. Tina also discusses the critical need for diversity and inclusion in recruitment and offers insights into building a successful career in a challenging job market. Her passion for helping others shines through as she shares her vision for the future and the importance of networking.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Tina Cella and Her Journey

05:11
Overcoming Personal Challenges

09:31
The Importance of Mindset and Self-Care

13:53
Mentorship and Career Growth

16:15
Diversity and Inclusion in Recruiting

20:08
Future Aspirations and Networking

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Tina's Bio:

Founder of Unicorn Career Compass
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-unicornhunter/

I help people navigate a crazy job market, focused mostly on GTM tech professionals and recent college grads in the tech world. 
I am a career advisor, relationship guru, dog mom, and yogi with a passion for people. 🫶
🚀 Why I'm Your Go-To Girl:
With a solid background in talent management, hiring, recruitment strategy, sourcing, and networking, I've honed my skills in business development, talent acquisition, and relationship building. I thrive on making connections that matter.
💖 My True Passion:
I'm all about elevating the human experience for both candidates and employers, creating a culture that fosters growth and success. It's not just a job; it's a calling.
🌟 What Sets Me Apart 🌟
✨ Proven track record as a consistent high performer, President's Club and recognized as a 6sensation.
✨Expert in managing all aspects of talent acquisition, from sourcing to negotiations, ensuring exceptional placements and hitting corporate goals.
✨ Social media savvy, especially on LinkedIn. I leverage digital platforms to showcase companies and attract top-tier talent.
🔍 Highlights of My Journey:
• Uniformly outstanding reviews and accolades.
• A knack for building lasting relationships with peers, candidates, and clients.

Cecilia Ng has spent a bulk of her tech career with companies like Facebook and Robinhood, however prior to this spent time abroad working in talent with companies like Moody's, Whirlpool and Robert Half. She is currently a Talent Partner with MVP Ventures, a firm specializing in co-investing with focus on early stage (Seed - A) and deep tech (AI, Hardware, Robotics). She partners primarily with Founders on their founding team hiring, collaborating on building hiring strategies, workflows and nascent infrastructure.

Katy is a learner, teacher, problem solver, hustler, networker, and entrepreneur. 

She started her career teaching Geometry in South East Washington D.C. as a Teach for America Corps Member. After seeing the inequities in education, she became passionate about teaching students and adults real world skills necessary for the workforce. She worked at Pearson and then General Assembly running massive educational programs.

While at GA, she partnered with Fortune 500 companies, including Booz Allen, Bloomberg, Capital One, The Department of Defense, and Disney, to up-skill and re-skill their teams. After realizing that GA was only solving one piece of the talent puzzle, she sought to learn more about recruiting. 

She then spent 2 years learning the ins and outs of recruiting at an executive search firm. Seeing a need to help companies in a 360 fashion, Katy founded Higher People.

While still an all-star recruiter, she also believes you have to find ways to motivate, re-skill, and retain your top talent. 

When she’s not helping companies, she’s rock climbing, hiking with her dogs Johnny Cash & Bleu, re-exploring LA, listening to live music, and working on her "adulting skills."

Brooke Wheeler is an executive Talent Acquisition leader known for transforming recruitment strategies and building high-performing teams. Most recently, as Vice President of Talent Acquisition at MerchantE, she led the hiring of over 500 employees in just four years, saving significant costs through innovative in-house strategies. Her dedication to business partnership was recognized at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, where she received the Golden Puck Award from the CEO for being an exceptional partner.

Now, as the founder of Restoration Talent Solutions, Brooke provides Fractional Talent Acquisition services to high-growth companies in industries such as Technology, FinTech and Data Analytics, helping them develop effective recruiting processes during pivotal growth phases. She’s loves to share her career insights on elevating your Talent Acquisition career and building impactful, scalable recruiting practices.

Meet Maisha, the dynamic founder of The Collab Lab, Inc. A trailblazer in the recruiting industry, her enthusiasm for learning and sharing knowledge is nothing short of infectious. Maisha has delivered powerful presentations at some of the most prestigious conferences in her field. She has captivated audiences at SourceCon (7x), Recruiters Network (6x), and Gem Summit (2x).

As an industry leader, her expertise has been displayed in publications such as Recruiting Daily, Recruiting Brainfood, and SourceCon.

Maisha's inventive approach to sourcing has not gone unnoticed. She has been honored as a finalist in the SourceCon Grandmaster Challenge and as the third-place winner in the World's Greatest Sourcer competition.

Anne is the Chief of Staff, Head of Marketing at Braintrust, the largest user owned talent network revolutionizing hiring with Braintrust AIR, the world's first and only end-to-end AI recruiting platform . Anne was hired as employee number one and was instrumental in building the company from the ground up, leading various elements of the business from go-to market strategy,  to recruiting and setting up the operational infrastructure  to support a company with 30 employees, thousands of customers, and  hundreds of thousands of talent around the globe.

Prior to joining Braintrust, Anne served as Director of Communications and then Chief of Staff at OZY Media. There Anne served as an extension of the CEO, tasked with the highest priority and visibility projects, from multimillion dollar partnerships to a Festival with over 20,000 attendees in Central Park, in addition to being responsible for all media placements.

Before OZY, Anne worked for four years at High10 Media, a PR agency with clients such as Smithsonian, the New York Daily News, National Geographic, and prior to High10, Anne cut her teeth in the FOX Business Network PR department.

Anne is a proud graduate of Boston College and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, 2 year old son, and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Kasi is a visionary talent acquisition and HR leader with 15 years of experience in scaling companies' talent strategies across Tech, FinTech, and Retail, including at Block (formerly Square), Stitch Fix, Wells Fargo, and Target. She has a proven track record of guiding teams through growth stages, IPOs, and revolutionizing recruiting strategies to drive unprecedented business expansion. Inspired by a passion for providing accelerative talent solutions for high growth companies, she founded Moxii Talent Solutions. Moxii Talent Solutions focuses on infusing the essence of moxie in every partnership through courage, determination, and innovation — specializing in crafting scalable, innovative talent solutions that empower businesses to achieve long-term success through strategic talent investments.

As a leader with experience focused on Talent Management in Silicon Valley startups and Fortune 500 companies, Stephanie leverages her expertise to help organizations thrive by improving employee engagement, retaining top talent, and elevating leadership effectiveness.

Stephanie also recognizes that our world is changing faster than we can adapt. That change is constant, and burnout is rampant. She works with leaders to empower them to lead and live with greater purpose, presence, and impact. Helping them elevate their leadership and expand their influence.

Jana is a strategic and inclusive Talent Acquisition Leader with over 15 years of recruiting experience in high-growth, fast-paced companies, and over 8 years of proven leadership in directly managing, coaching, and mentoring high-performing teams. Her passion lies in building talent strategies that not only drive business success but also cultivate diverse, engaged, and thriving teams. She is currently serving as the Head of Talent at Logic20/20, where she's been committed to achieving exceptional outcomes while fostering a culture of collaboration and success across all levels of the organization. Before joining Logic20/20, she spent four years at West Monroe, a global business and technology consulting firm, where she led global talent acquisition efforts across Digital and Technology. Prior to West Monroe, she spent four years at EY, where she led talent acquisition efforts within Technology Consulting. She was recently recognized as a Talent100 Awardee (by Higher Community), which recognizes the top leaders in Talent Acquisition worldwide. 

Rocki Howard, founder of Diversiology.IO and host of the Grown Woman Life podcast, is a renowned diversity and talent acquisition strategist. A 2022 and 2023 SIA Diversity Influencer and Global Power 150 Woman in Staffing, she's an advisory board member for WedgeHR and Informed Decisions, and a Forbes HR Council member. Featured on various outlets such as ABC News, various podcasts, and talent platforms, she's a vocal advocate for DEIB, speaking at major events. As a black, Christian wife and mom over 40, she's dedicated to fostering engaged, inclusive work cultures and believes you change the world, one story, one conversation, one action at a time.

Lusely Martinez has over 8 years of HR and recruiting experience and currently serves as Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at Syndio, a workplace equity SaaS platform. She is also the Founder and Principal Consultant at FirstGen Lab, supporting the careers of first-generation professionals. Lusely's expertise includes building early-stage start-up teams, optimizing talent acquisition through technology, and strategic workforce planning. In addition to her corporate roles, Lusely shares her insights on hiring trends and best practices on Linkedin, podcasts and other platforms. Her commitment to empowering diverse talent continues to shape her career journey.

Sylvanna is a recruiter with 9 years' experience, specializing in sourcing talent across diverse industries from O&G, semiconductor, hospitality, and energy sector.

Hosts Natalie Stones and Krista Tan sit down with Kaylee Estes, a talent acquisition leader, entrepreneur, and mom with over a decade of experience scaling high-growth technology companies. In January 2023, Kaylee founded Estes Group, a talent strategy firm built for startups and their early teams. Estes Group has reimagined a way to grow early-stage startups and beyond- by making better hires early and creating recruiting playbooks for their unique needs. Kaylee lives in Atlanta and has three children. 

Katie Finn is currently a Director of Talent Acquisition at Dow Jones, overseeing strategic hiring across nine business units. Prior to her role at Dow Jones, Katie spent over 10 years at the Walt Disney Company supporting ABC News. She managed talent acquisition during significant scaling initiatives including the launch of the streaming network ABC NEWS Live. Katie also has experience at a high-growth telecom startup, sourcing specialized talent in the US and EMEA and spent time at a staffing agency focused within financial services. 

• Jill is the director for Early Talent Programs at Insperity. Jill holds multiple industry certifications—certified personnel consultant, certified temporary staffing specialist, SPHR and SHRM-SCP. She has also earned her Masters of Science in Human Resource Management from Tarleton State University-Stephenville.

Is Gina Peckman the real-life superhero of executive recruitment? Well, more than a quarter-century of fulfilling engagements has honed those senses to dizzying levels. Instinctively, she appreciates that the intangibles are what make a particular candidate not simply qualified but just right. Known in her field as the powerhouse founder of Dynamo Recruiting, perhaps Gina’s true superpowers are her knack for evolution, reinvention, and striving to uphold the principles of the industry she helped build.

Throughout the past decade, she's maintained this powerful vision, working with a "who's who" list of Pacific Northwest clients that includes top start ups-as well as Fortune 500 enterprises-all of whom have benefited greatly from her expertise in the talent acquisition and management arena. Having completed hundreds of executive placements to date, along with numerous mid-management and technical search, Gina knows exactly how to showcase an employer's job opening, product offering and cultural aspect to attract and close deals with top performers from around the globe.

Gina is the standard-bearer for PS Partners and all that it embodies: sustained experience, uncompromising integrity, and a personal connection and steadfast commitment to clients and candidates. As leader of the only company to bear her name, Gina champions its values and mission to create rewarding connections.

Edie Greenberg is a freelance Startup Recruiter who thrives on coffee, creativity, and conversations. Married with three young adult children (who she constantly nags about updating their LinkedIn profiles), she's a founding member of Talent Collective’s Chicago chapter. A Gen Xer with a Gen Z spirit, Edie dreams of shaking things up at a Women’s Health startup focused on midlife wellness.

Guest Jaidin McCann is CEO at Jasper Consultancy and specializes in executive search & human capital strategy, transforming cultures, and optimizing Growth. She's an advisor, speaker and board member and was named top 100 innovators & entrepreneurs.

With over 15 years in talent acquisition, Carrie Beeks has thrived in startups, fast-paced sales organizations, and Fortune 500 companies, primarily within professional services. Specializing in senior and executive recruitment, she has adeptly built recruitment infrastructure and spearheaded retention and employee experience initiatives. Her genuine passion lies in understanding people's stories, forging meaningful relationships, and guiding individuals to achieve their career aspirations. Throughout her career, Carrie has continually demonstrated a commitment to both the individuals she works with and the organizations she serves.

Hosts Natalie Stones and Krista Tan welcome Talent Collective founding member Larissa Gerlach as they discuss how Larissa got into recruiting and who helped shape her journey along the way.

Sarah Englade is the Owner & Founder of Monarch Talent Solutions, a boutique recruitment firm that specializes in senior-level and mid-executive-level direct-hire roles in accounting, finance, and human resources throughout Houston, TX. Sarah serves as an executive recruiter within the firm, partnering with local companies to grow their teams. She also offers candidates career resources, including resume, cover letter, and interview support, job market trend updates, local continuing education opportunities, and more. 

Before launching Monarch Talent Solutions in 2020, Sarah gained nearly a decade of recruiting and leadership experience at two global recruiting firms. In her roles, she was regularly recognized as a top producer, successfully placing over 2,800 candidates between 2012 and 2020 and generating millions in revenue. Now, Sarah is focused on humanizing the recruiting process, driven by her firm's core values. 

Sarah's commitment to the Houston community extends beyond her professional endeavors. She volunteers at Dress for Success Houston, is an active member of the Greater Houston Women's Chamber of Commerce (GHWCC), and was a nominee for the Houston Business Journal's 40 Under 40 from 2022 to 2024. Various media outlets have recognized her contributions, including Shoutout HTX, Voyage Houston, GoSolo, CanvasRebel Magazine, Houston Made, and LFN Network's Breaking The Silence Talk Show.

Outside of her professional life, Sarah finds joy in spending time with her husband and their two dogs and cat. She is an avid reader, a passionate traveler, and a dedicated fitness enthusiast. Her love for her community is evident in her active support for various Houston initiatives.

Danielle Mathis's loves nothing more than mentoring and growing people- helping connect great talent to great places, watching them succeed and make an impact. She has managed recruiting and HRBP teams of up to 20+ globally and is experienced in consulting through thought partnerships with executive leadership to plan headcount equitably. She always strives to improve processes, recruiting best practices, and customer experience for hiring managers and candidates.