Meet The Gems of Talent Summit! Part 2

Gem Talent Summit is now less than a week away; and we’re nearly bursting with excitement. Last week we shared a taste of the speakers who’ll be talking with us about how they’re reimagining hiring in 2021. Here are the other talent acquisition professionals coming your way on September 15th:

Customer Spotlight: Peloton 

Will Blaze, Director of Talent Acquisition @ Peloton

Will has been at Peloton for more than 5 years, working closely with engineering to grow their teams. Before Peloton, Will held recruiting positions at Birchbox and with several staffing orgs; prior to that he contributed to the Wall Street Journal’s “Hire Education” blog where he wrote about the job market for recent college grads. In other words, Will’s been thinking about talent for a long time. As for Peloton, demand for its exercise bikes and treadmills surged during COVID—doubling revenue and more-than-quadrupling stock prices in 2020—and the company acquired premium fitness equipment maker Precor to increase manufacturing capacity and meet demand. But even prior to the pandemic, the org had doubled revenue every year since its founding. At Summit, Will will join us for a fireside chat, along with Peloton’s VP of Talent Acquisition, Tim Brown. We’ll discuss strategies and insights as they relate to how Will and Tim think of themselves as strategic partners to the business.  

Tim Brown, VP of Talent Acquisition @ Peloton

Tim has led and managed talent acquisition teams at Amazon, Google, GE, and WeWork. He’s now at Peloton; and as the company introduces new products and enters new markets, growth remains aggressive for the org. Tim will join Will Blaze and Matt Cleve, VP of GTM Solutions & Enablement at Gem, for our fireside chat.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion Panel 

Christal Morris, SVP and Global Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion @ Peloton

Dr. Christal Morris is responsible for carrying out Peloton’s commitment and pledge towards anti-racism, and for activating DEI throughout the employee cycle. She’s been in Human Resources for over 24 years, leading Inclusion and Diversity strategies for many leading organizations. Prior to Peloton, Morris founded CLM & Associates to help organizations with fewer than 5000 employees with their Diversity and Talent training needs related to race, anti-racism, inclusive leadership, and diversity strategy. She’s served as the Vice President of Diversity for a global manufacturing organization; and as Global Head of Inclusion, Diversity, and Talent for a human capital and risk firm. Christal, too, will be part of our DEI panel. This is going to be a thoughtful and engaging conversation. Come and bring your questions!

Jason Medley, Chief People Officer @ Codility

Jason is a Certified High Performance Coach, a developer of talent, and a creator of culture. He partners with high-growth companies to help them create people ops and recruiting strategies. He describes his true desire as one in which “people live more intentional lives as opposed to the reactive lives many of us lead everyday.” And this desire translates into his work in recruiting: he’s leading the charge, proactively and intentionally, on what the future of work looks like at Codility as the company continues to grow globally and triples-down on a remote culture. Jason will join Ragini, Marcos, and Christal in our DEI panel, where he’ll share his strategies at Codility and elsewhere for sustaining DEI in a changing workforce landscape.

Ragini Holloway, Senior Vice President of People @ Affirm

Ragini’s work is primarily with high-growth startups: she helps them scale their recruitment and people infrastructure, often from scratch. In this role, one of her biggest focuses is on finding—and then keeping—diverse talent, through equitable hiring processes and workplace environments. Ragini will be one of the panelists in Summit’s “Ensuring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in a Remote Workplace” panel. If your team is assessing its DEI initiatives in light of its return-to-work strategy, this will be a can’t-miss discussion for you.

Marco Lindsey, Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion @ University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business

Marco lives by three defining principles: 1) Live your life by imagining the things your 80-year-old self will wish you would have done; 2) You’ll become successful by first helping as many people as possible become successful; and 3) You are someone’s ancestor. Use your life to build something for those who will inherit the earth after you. (We’re really into those principles.) He’s a Diversity First™ certified diversity, equity, & inclusion and belonging leader with deep expertise in human resources, community activism, and anti-racism; and Associate Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Marco was the first African American Chief of Staff at Berkeley Haas. In 2017,  he received congressional recognition from Councilwoman Barbara Lee for his work in promoting diversity in the tech sector. He’s an educator and public speaker, and has worked with dozens of organizations to promote belonging and inclusion in the workplace. We’re thrilled that he’ll be moderating our DEI panel at Talent Summit.

Get Inspired

Robyn Benincasa, Adventure Racing World Champion

When the challenges are steep and the competition fierce, Robyn Benincasa provides the tools individuals and organizations need to cross their most challenging finish lines. As a two-time World Champion Adventure racer, San Diego Firefighter, and CNN Hero, Robyn knows a thing or two about creating Human Synergy, or as she puts it, “That magic that allows ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things together.” 

Through harrowing experiences in places like the jungles of Borneo and the Himalayan peaks, Robyn has studied the good, the bad, and the not-so-pretty of Extreme Teamwork. Her refreshing and unique techniques build and foster impactful, inspired teams that succeed against all odds and turn setbacks into comebacks. 

Robyn was named one of 2020s World’s Top 50 Keynote Speakers (Real Leaders Magazine), the #1 Female Speaker for Meetings.net, and is one of the Top 10 Speakers featured by Harvard Business Review. She has motivated countless leaders and teams for Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Starbucks, Walmart, Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, HubSpot, Intel, and more. Her game-changing keynotes inspire us to grab life with one hand, our teammates with the other and create that special magic that makes each of us stronger together than we could ever be alone.