Our Core Team
Jessye Kass Karlin, MBA
Founder & President
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Jessye Kass Karlin is a strategist, executive coach, and former nonprofit executive director with 15+ years of experience in the social impact sector. For over a decade she has partnered with mission-driven organizations as a consultant, and for the past five years has worked full-time as a solopreneur, supporting nonprofits in building strong, collaborative teams.
Known for her empathetic and communicative approach to recruitment, she founded Riverwalker Talent to bridge the gap between hiring strategy and human care. Jessye partners closely with nonprofits and social impact organizations as a fractional recruiter and talent strategist to help solve problems, build teams, and nurture talent.
Over the course of her career, Jessye has led 100+ searches, coached more than 400 emerging and executive leaders, and facilitated trainings on leadership, conflict resolution, and workplace wellness across industries. She is excited to expand Riverwalker Talent into a collaborative team dedicated to building workplaces where purpose and people align.
Samantha Gloria
Business Operations Manager
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Samantha Gloria is an operations and people specialist who ensures the details behind mission-driven recruitment run seamlessly.
With experience spanning HR operations, executive administration, and recruitment support, she brings order and clarity to complex processes. Known for her precision, adaptability, and empathetic communication, Samantha has supported nonprofit leaders, consultants, and teams in developing systems that keep people and projects moving forward.
At Riverwalker Talent, Samantha anchors the candidate and client experience, managing operations with care and consistency so every search is handled with both efficiency and humanity. Behind the scenes, she is the backbone ensuring purpose-driven teams have the support they need to do their best work.
Our Collaborators
At Riverwalker Talent, we know that we are strongest with our community partners and experts who help us solve our trickiest client issues, collaborate with us on niche searches, and talent development efforts, and help us support organizations who are working to make the world a better place.
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Katrina Magdol (she/her) is a Strategic People Operations leader and the founder of Amalou Consulting. A former Philadelphia classroom teacher, Katrina brings a practitioner’s heart to her systems-level work. Her career has spanned education, human resources, and solo-preneurship.
Amalou Consulting partners with social impact organizations to bridge the gaps between mission and operational excellence. We specialize in building scalable talent management structures, elevating people operations systems, and providing fractional or interim leadership.
Prior to launching Amalou Consulting, Katrina spent a decade at Bottom Line, a national education nonprofit, where she was a key leader during a period of rapid expansion. She designed and executed the operations and HR strategies that allowed the organization to navigate complex growth while multiplying its impact.
Deeply committed to reshaping the future of work, Katrina is also the co-founder of Listen to Your Mothers, an entrepreneurial venture reimagining the workplace for parents. Through this work, she is transforming policies and practices in order to create inclusive environments where caregivers thrive and organizations multiply their impact.
She lives in Boston, MA with her wife and two daughters.
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Shivani Mehta Bhatia is a conflict midwife, equity advisor, and systems strategist. She is the founder of Tulsi Strategies, a transition design consultancy that supports justice-rooted leaders and social sector organizations as they navigate power, repair, and complex change. Her work sits at the intersection of relational skills and systems change, helping teams build the capacity and structures that make new worlds possible.
She is also the author of Intimate Practice, a weekly newsletter about the human side of systems change.
Get in touch at www.shivani.co/links.
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Luis Alvarado (he/him) is a seasoned Senior Global HR Executive with over 15+ years of experience across the private and public sectors. With a proven track record in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, he brings deep expertise in international HR strategy, organizational transformation, and talent development. Bilingual and business-savvy, Luis seamlessly blends strategic insight with operational execution to drive business results through people. Currently based in New York City, Luis has led HR functions at leading organizations including Mars Petcare, Creator Robotics, and Impossible Foods. His work spans M&A integration, DEI leadership, workforce planning, employee relations, crisis management, and learning and development. He is especially known for aligning HR strategy with business objectives, optimizing HR structures, and fostering cultures of high performance and inclusion. Luis has successfully built and scaled HR operations globally—implementing innovative HRIS systems, mentoring high-performing teams, and leveraging data analytics to inform talent decisions. His background in the U.S. military adds a foundation of discipline and results-driven leadership that complements his progressive HR approach. A trusted advisor and people-first leader, Luis Alvarado is passionate about helping organizations grow through scalable, human-centered strategies that elevate both business outcomes and workplace culture.
Get in touch here
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Nadya Pierre (she/her) is a fractional People Ops leader, executive coach, and talent strategist with over a decade of experience helping startups build the human infrastructure behind their big ideas. She founded Soleo Strategies to bring senior-level People Ops thinking to early-stage companies without the full-time overhead, partnering with founders and leadership teams to build strong teams, scalable systems, and cultures built around what the company is actually trying to do. She brings the strategic fluency, the human touch, and the practicality that growing teams need most.
Nadya is especially drawn to mission-driven work, and much of her career has been in life sciences and biotech, where the stakes are high and the outcome is literally lives saved. Her background spans recruiting, HR infrastructure, leadership development, and coaching, with a particular focus on the Seed to Series B growth stage, where the right people decisions can define a company's trajectory.
When she's not deep in org design or L&D strategy, you can find Nadya at homebase in sunny Sacramento or chasing the nearest stretch of ocean with her son.work centers queer and disability inclusion, mutuality between employee and employer, and the belief that good HR can actually make work better, for everyone.
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Sarah Noyes (she/her) is a seasoned recruiter, HR professional, and social entrepreneur. For over a decade, she has leveraged her nonprofit background, sizable national network, and keen working knowledge of best practices to support mission-minded organizations with their talent searches. This includes a wide range of innovative organizations, many of whom serve predominantly minority populations and support quality of life issues such as healthcare, housing, workforce development, gender equality and education. Noyes is passionate about applying a racial and social justice lens to recruitment, while never sacrificing securing an ideal candidate for any role she fills. She is also committed to building the capacity of HR professionals and her clients, always striving to enable them to better lead culturally competent executive searches.
Connect with Sarah: People Systems That Work
Contact Sarah
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Frederick Nii Tettey is in school for business management and has been assisting Riverwalker Talent with specialized projects since the beginning of 2025. Nii resides in Accra, Ghana. In addition to this work, he works for the local government in Ghana in an administrative and public health role. Nii is also raising three small children. He is passionate about learning and opportunity, and supports our team with a variety of critical tasks.
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Jennifer Laurie (they/she) is a fractional Chief People Officer and founder of the Equitable HR Guild. With over fifteen years of experience in nonprofit and startup spaces, she helps organizations build equitable, sustainable workplaces rooted in care and clarity. Jennifer specializes in setting up HR infrastructure, change management, and embedding equity across the full talent lifecycle—from hiring and onboarding through retention and growth. Her work centers queer and disability inclusion, mutuality between employee and employer, and the belief that good HR can actually make work better, for everyone.
Connect with Jennifer
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T. Tara Turk-Haynes is a strategic leader at the intersection of talent acquisition, workplace culture, and business performance. As a first-generation college graduate, she has dedicated her career to creating inclusive, equitable workplaces that drive engagement, retention, and innovation.
As the Founder of Equity Activations, T. Tara partners with companies to embed diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into daily operations, crafting measurable, equity-driven strategies within Talent Acquisition, Leadership Development, and Organizational Culture. Her approach centers on aligning DEIB initiatives with business objectives to create sustainable, high-impact outcomes.
As a former executive overseeing Talent, Employee Engagement, Internal Communications and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy, she developed data-driven programs that strengthened hiring pipelines, expanded professional development access, and established equitable assessment frameworks. Her initiatives fostered impactful employee resource groups, inclusive leadership committees, and a deeper integration of diverse perspectives—enhancing both workforce representation and business outcomes.
A recognized thought leader, T. Tara has been honored by the Los Angeles Business Journal, Untapped, and Topmate.io, among others. She has also been featured on virtual and live programs including HR Therapy, thePozCast, Diversiology, Living Corporate, Dr. Nika White, RecFest, Talent Acquisition Week, Culture Amp, and more. Additionally, her insights have appeared in publications like Lars Schmidt’s Redefining HR.
She remains committed to helping companies build sustainable, high-impact equity strategies that align with business success.
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Erika Cherry (she/her) is a Fractional HR Advisor and Career Coach who helps organizations navigate the messy middle of growth, change, and people leadership. With deep experience across employee relations, leadership coaching, and HR strategy, Erika partners with founders, executives, and leadership teams to build practical, people-centered solutions that support both the business and the humans behind it.
Known for her thoughtful, direct approach, Erika helps leaders move from reactive HR to intentional people strategy—whether that means strengthening leadership capability, navigating complex employee situations, or creating healthier, more accountable workplace cultures. As a fractional partner, she brings senior-level HR perspective without the overhead of a full-time executive, offering trusted guidance exactly when organizations need it most.
Jessye Kass Karlin
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Jessye Kass Karlin believes that the way we hire, lead, and communicate has the power to shape not just workplaces, but lives. Her path into this work is not a straight line, it’s a river of lived experience, leadership, and lessons learned.
Before founding Riverwalker Talent, Jessye spent over a decade in nonprofit leadership roles, often in moments of growth or crisis. She discovered that what made the biggest difference wasn’t just strategy or systems, it was people: how they felt seen, how they worked together, and how they found meaning in the mission.
Over the course of her career, Jessye has guided 100+ searches, coached hundreds of leaders, and facilitated trainings on leadership, conflict resolution, and workplace wellness.
Her perspective is also shaped by her own lived experiences as a survivor of domestic violence and bullying, a queer and differently-abled leader, and someone who has navigated both personal and systemic challenges. These experiences ground her commitment to building spaces where people are heard and valued.
Clients and colleagues know Jessye for her deep listening, her ability to ask the questions others avoid, and her mix of warmth and clarity. She brings humor, honesty, and humanity to her work—whether she’s guiding a search, coaching a leader, or facilitating a difficult conversation.
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We chose the name Riverwalker because it reflects both our philosophy and our approach. Walking in a river requires skill: navigating shifting currents, uneven footing, and unexpected turns. At Riverwalker Talent, we move with clients and candidates through the places that are harder to traverse, guiding them across transitions with clarity and care. We stand between multiple sides, bridging the needs of organizations and the talents of individuals, to help both find alignment.
Riverwalker represents how we walk with you through complexity to help your teams find their anchor and flow at every stage.
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100+ searches led for nonprofit and mission-driven organizations
400+ leaders coached, from emerging managers to seasoned executives
38+ trainings facilitated on leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and workplace wellness
15+ years of nonprofit and social impact leadership, including Executive Director experience and 12 years of supervising staff
Featured speaker and trainer for national and international organizations
Featured in a CNBC interview as a career expert
21K followers on LinkedIn
MBA, Master in Business Administration from Quantic School of Business and Technology, Washington, DC
Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude with highest honors from Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Fulbright U.S. Student Award to Thailand (2013).
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Jessye’s approach is rooted in listening, empathy, and practical strategy. She partners with clients whose values align with Riverwalker’s mission, ensuring that each engagement is purposeful and impactful. Her discovery process includes extensive staff input, creating solutions that are holistic, inclusive, and tailored to each organization’s needs.
Stellar candidate experience is a hallmark of her recruitment practice: every applicant receives updates, interviewed candidates receive feedback, and organizations gain trust with their communities through transparent, respectful hiring processes. Jessye also integrates equity into every search, from salary transparency to intentionally sourcing diverse candidate pools.
Her coaching and facilitation style is approachable and grounded. She mixes personal anecdotes, actionable tools, and honest dialogue to help leaders and teams strengthen communication, resolve conflict, and grow together.
Our Impact
