Our Team
Meet the People Behind it All
Cyndy Davis

About Cyndy
Cyndy Davis, SPHR, is an expert-level recruiter and HR professional with a passion for sourcing candidates.
Her background includes leadership roles at Microsoft and TimeWarner. She is a SourceCon Grandmaster Champion. In her spare time, she shows dogs, grows hoya, and designs websites for friends.
Zac Gibson

About Zac
Zac joined Emerald Talent in January of 2020. He has 5 years of technical recruiting experience, with a focus on Software and Hardware Engineering. Zac is dedicated to providing both candidates and clients a seamless, thoughtful, in-depth hiring process with a dual focus on technical and soft skills.
When not working, Zac is usually spending time with his wife and chasing their 3 kids around. He enjoys working on cars, computers and is a huge movie buff.
Rae Salas

About Rae
Hi, I’m Rae, and I am Recruiting Sourcer for Emerald Talent. In my free time I enjoy camping, hiking, and rock crawling with my family. I am happily located in the SF Bay Area and love to take advantage of the great weather and wonderful places to visit. A fun fact about me, I served in the Marines and deployed to Afghanistan.
Nathan Hill

About Nathan
Nathan Hill is a seasoned technology recruiter with more than 15 years’ of successful experience in full life cycle recruiting.
He is known for his professionalism, dedication and rapport with candidates and clients. With great attention to detail, he meets the specific needs of both the hiring organization and candidate.
Nathan has a proven ability to foster relationships with C-Suite and senior executives for I.T. Operations, and Software Development roles.
When he is not recruiting, you can find him on a white sand beach working on his social media following.
Janelle Knight

About Janelle
An energetic entrepreneur at heart with a passion for people and building relationships. As a lifelong learner, I am focused on personal growth and I have found that I thrive when making an impact in the lives of others. I love being a creative contributor in a fast-paced team environment. I have learned so much in my professional years and am a lover of change and connection, operational efficiency, challenging projects, and building relationships.
The recruiting world allows me to help others grow and get connected with their next career adventure. My experience spans the public safety sector, non-profit, outdoor adventures, virtual team building, technical and business recruiting.
In my free time, you’ll find me listening to music and singing while organizing everything or creating something… which usually leads to staying up too late! I love playing board, card games, photography, day trips, painting, DIY, and making memories with my boyfriend, my kids, and our dogs! The best advice I have ever heard and now live by is “don’t seek advice from anyone you wouldn’t be willing to switch places with.”
Jeff Graves

About Jeff
Jeff Graves is a dynamic, results-focused full-life cycle recruiting professional with a commitment to client service and creative recruitment. With 20+ years of success locating, identifying, and closing top candidate talent, with a special emphasis on hard-to-fill positions. Strength in building and maintaining authentic candidate relationships to ensure a consistent talent pipeline. Proven ability to self-manage multiple positions by sourcing, screening, qualifying, coordinating interviews, negotiating, and closing candidates.
Suzanne Horner

About Suzanne
Suzanne has extensive experience working in the field of talent acquisition. She’s helped a number of startup companies build candidate-centric talent acquisition programs and teams. She also does technical recruiting with a specialization in the computer engineering and data science verticals.
Suzanne is a career growth coach and author who has worked with over 3000 people in the tech industry helping them to land their dream jobs.
Matt Chandler

About Matt
Matt Chandler joined Emerald Talent in March of 2021 after 2 years of recruiting mid-level executives in a diverse array of settings. He has recruited and closed searches for everything from data scientists, growth marketers, accountants/finance leaders, creative directors, total rewards leaders, to sales/account directors, and engineers.
Industry agnostic, Matt enjoys searching for talent with non-profits, large tech and finance, private equity, startups, education, and healthcare. As a former educator Matt appreciates the connection, teamwork, and learning that comes from being a matchmaker in the hiring process. In his free time, Matt loves to golf, watch the Chicago Cubs, read books with his book club, and study comedy in Chicago.
Dani Baird

About Dani
My name is Dani and I currently live in the Houston area. I have been in recruiting for over 10 years and love all the people I have met and things I have learned. I love hanging with my 2 boys and teaching them new stuff. Reading, camping, and taking my jeep offroading are also joys in my life. I am an open book just enjoying life. Feel free to reach out with any questions or just to chat!
Jena Broussard

About Jena
I’ve been recruiting for over 12 years. I started my career in staffing and moved to corporate. In my time as a recruiter, i have worked in various industries including, professional services, construction, aviation, government, defense, technical, cyber security, and Fintec. I enjoy finding niche candidates and going through the entire process. There is nothing more thrilling than making an offer! In my spare time, I have a herd of animals and most of them are deaf so I am learning American Sign Language(asl) to further teach them new tricks! I enjoy live music and spending time with my friends and family!
Rich Linn

About Rich
With 27 years of professional experience, Rich spent the first 10 years as a hands-on engineer. With certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Dell, IBM and many others, he has leveraged that technical expertise for the last 17 years in Staffing Agency Sales and Recruiting, Technical Sourcing, Corporate Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Consulting. A native of the Dallas, TX area, Rich enjoys RVing, the outdoors and spending time with family and friends.
Kristie Rockett

About Kristie
Kristie has over 12 years of full-cycle recruitment experience mostly within the technology, telecom, healthcare, and automotive industries. She has a passion for matching the right professional to the right opportunity within the right organization. Recognized for her white-glove approach, Kristie easily excels in recruiting passive highly accomplished executives and hard-to-find technology unicorns.
When not recruiting, you can find Kristie hiking or traveling the world with her two teenagers or hanging out with her six dogs.
James Temple

About James
James is a household name in the Talent Industry. Over the last 20 years, he has developed countless partnerships and has enabled such companies as: Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Nordstrom, REI, WeWork, Zillow, Ycombinator, to accelerate their talent stream and provide them with the best the industry has to offer. As a business leader, he has focused on strategic sourcing and pushing the boundaries of finding that epic workstream. James enjoys providing hacks and share-backs too, he’s been involved in LinkedIn Talent Connect, Talent 42, SouceCon – you get the gist. When not daydreaming about efficiencies, James enjoys all things automotive and outdoors, plus QT with his two boys.
Wendy McIntosh

About Wendy
Wendy McIntosh, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Emerald Talent, LLC, is a Talent Acquisition executive who focuses on improving recruiting effectiveness for Emerald Talent customers while building a great company culture and place for recruiters to work. Prior to Emerald Talent, Wendy led and directed in-house corporate technical recruiting teams at Amazon.com, SAP-Concur, BlackBerry, and Microsoft. She turned her attention to startups, leading hyper-growth hiring at DevOps titans like Chef Software and HashiCorp before starting her own business. Wendy believes putting hiring, best-in-class, diverse technical talent at the forefront of a company’s agenda, is what infuses clients’ competitive advantage and ultimate success.
Cooper McKay

About Cooper
Cooper is an experienced Technical Recruiter with over 15 years experience in the talent acquisition and information technology industry. Originally from Santa Cruz, California and residing in the Pacific Northwest the past few years. Cooper was an engineer before becoming a recruiter 5 years ago, and enjoys talking tech with engineering candidates and providing the highest levels of customer service. Outside of work Cooper is a student airplane pilot, and also enjoys playing video games with his identical twin brother.
Whit Blanton

About Whit
Professional career includes 20+ years in Staffing & Recruiting, both as a Senior Recruiter and Senior Sourcer. Whit has been a corporate Recruiter at Verizon, HP and Xerox.
Hobbies/Interests: Biking, going to movies, cooking (True foodie at heart), billiards, motocross, trivia, vintage cars, investing, travel, road trips, playing poker, going to concerts/music festivals and handing out with good friends and family
Fun fact: I competed in the 2006 and 2008 World Series of Poker Championship Events in Las Vegas. I finished in the top 2% of players in 2006 and won $47,000. In 2008, I also did quite well and won $29,000. I had some brief TV time on ESPN and also played with actor Jason Alexander who was of course the infamous George Costanza on Seinfeld.
Veronica Do

About Veronica
My name is Veronica, I currently reside in Spokane, WA with my two dogs – Teddy (3) and Mimi (13). I am a spoon, biking/cycling, and anime enthusiast who dreams of one day running her own gym, fully equipped with a boba bar.
My “why” for recruitment is simple – I want people to find joy in their work. To equip people, from all walks of life with the tools they need to reach for what they really want. Recruitment is a mode of empowerment. Allowing both the candidate and hiring manager to dream a little louder. Perhaps a SDE who has worked in the toy industry, has lived in the South end of Vietnam and can also play the flute on a professional level – I know you exist somewhere out there! In the age of internet domination, I am happy and excited to take part in the shift of impossible becoming reality.
Lilia Meza

About Lilia
Lilia is a lover of learning and helping others. She is enthusiastic, efficient, creative, and motivated to make a difference in people’s lives. Lilia has over 10 years of experience in the Healthcare industry, non-profit, cosmetic, and beauty industries. Specializes in scheduling, coordinating, and administrative management. Excited to be a part of a culture that strives for relationship building, team building, and matching people with purpose and passion.
In my free time, you can find me singing, writing music, making makeup tutorials, and creating memories with my two daughters and husband. Currently, a student at the University of Washington studying Public Health.
Favorite quote “ Follow your passion. It will lead you to your purpose”.