Our Core Team
Jessye Kass Karlin, MBA
Samantha Gloria
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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.
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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.
Business Operations Manager
Founder
& President
Marketing and Design Coordinator
Mallori Hatch
Executive Assistant
Alisha Bose
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Alisha Bose is a human-centered designer who prioritizes inclusivity and accessibility in all of her work.
She recently graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s of Science in Human Centered Design and Engineering with a minor in Disability Studies. She is currently starting her Master’s at UC Berkeley in Information Management and Systems, and is excited to use her education to continue creating inclusive systems for everyone.Some of her favorite work has been with her research for young children with disabilities to foster play, and with the Society of Women Engineers as the Collegiate Working Group Chair. She hopes to continue in volunteering and research in the fields she cares about.
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Mallori Hatch is an executive assistant and emerging graphic designer who recently earned her BA in Graphic Design and Media Arts. Her degree follows a previous career in administration where her work ranged from private design firms, school administration, and government work.
With her natural attention to detail, Mallori anticipates needs and bridges gaps in business operations and communications. She merges her administrative background with design thinking to yield thoughtful solutions, integrating brand concepts with accessibility standards to maximize inclusion.
When she’s not creating visual solutions, Mallori enjoys photography, reading, and watercolor painting.
Our Collaborators
At Riverwalker Talent, we're strongest alongside the community partners and experts who help us crack tough client problems, collaborate on niche searches and talent development, and support organizations working to make the world better. Our collaborators below support us on a regular basis and bring unique skills to our consultative approach.
Talent Professionals
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Katie Chen is a seasoned fractional recruiter with over a combined decade of experience in in-house corporate recruiting and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO). Her career started in international development, which continues to inform her humanistic and empathetic approach to recruiting: every search sits at the intersection of an organization’s mission and a candidate’s next chapter. For the past four years, she has provided recruiting execution and talent strategy consulting to mission-driven organizations, including food banks, health information systems organizations, leadership development non-profits, education technology start-ups, public health associations, social services organizations supporting displaced youth and domestic violence survivors, and others.
Katie’s services span the full recruiting lifecycle and strategy from sourcing specialized roles such as social workers and museum registrars to executive directors. She advises leadership teams on interview design, hiring strategy, and long-term talent value. As an AIRS PRC-certified recruiter, she combines effective search methodologies with an understanding of tight budgets, specialized roles, and how a person fits in the overall organization. She approaches each search with an understanding that a hiring decision affects real people and real organizational outcomes.
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Arianna Greene is a SHRM certified Human Resources Professional with a career-long record of overseeing a wide-range of HR Operations. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Communication Studies from SUNY Oneonta and a master’s degree in Management from Excelsior University. She currently serves as an Officer, Senior Human Resources Business Partner at Arrow Financial Corporation where she has cultivated long-lasting relationships and has been a trusted advisor. In addition to her expertise in talent acquisition, Arianna excels in employee relations and coaching business leaders, ensuring they are equipped to navigate complex workplace challenges. As a passionate advocate for workforce development, she created and now serves as the program leader for Arrow's internship program. She is also on the Board for the Capital Region Recruiter’s Network, Board Member for the Capital Region Human Resources Association, chairing the Student Engagement Committee, and volunteers for the American Heart Association. She continuously strives to be a force for progress, by making a difference in her community embodying the values of inclusion, authenticity, innovation, and responsibility in all that she does.
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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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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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Erin Riska is a consultative talent strategist and full-cycle recruiter, supporting social enterprises as they scale and small businesses as they surge. As the founder of Search & Rescue Talent Strategy Solutions, Erin leverages 20+ years of experience in corporate social responsibility, non-profit program management, experiential education and community mental health, partnering with mission-driven, values-aligned organizations to bring form, function and finesse to recruiting operations, performance management and professional development, curating deeply committed, highly engaged teams that drive impact.
HR and People Operations
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
DEI
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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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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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dani (she/her) is a bilingual, award-winning DEI, Workplace, and Talent Consultant with 20+ years of global experience across Talent Operations, Recruitment, DEI, and Leadership. She partners with organizations to make workplaces work for everyone, with a career spanning global hiring transformations, auditing and redesigning biased processes, instructional design, and building the systems that quietly shape whether a workplace actually includes the people in it.
Radically and unapologetically committed to intentional inclusion, dani helps talent teams and leaders embed equity, inclusion, and accessibility into the everyday decisions, policies, and processes that build culture. Through consulting, training, fractional leadership, and speaking, she designs custom, human-centered strategies that help organizations attract, retain, and grow the talent they're trying to reach.
A recognized voice in the space, dani has been featured in Forbes, BBC, Business Insider, and Inc., and honored by Culture Amp, Latino Leaders, ALPFA, and Mogul, among others. She has shared her POV on stages like SXSW, DisruptHR, and Lesbians Who Tech, and continues to speak and write on inclusive hiring, people-first leadership, workplace culture, and keeping the future of HR human.
Learning & Development
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Nancy Stubbs (she/her) helps mission-driven leaders align who they are with how they work.
Founder of Hire Resonance, LLC, she combines 25+ years of direct and consultative HR experience, deep Kolbe™ expertise, and body-centered conscious leadership practices to help leaders build and grow thriving, high-performing teams without burning out.
A Kolbe Certified™ Consultant, Big Leap Certified Coach and Hendricks Institute-trained practitioner, Nancy is known for quickly building trust and weaving together powerful and practical tools for meaningful leadership performance at pivotal moments.
She is a featured coach in several networks dedicated to helping leaders and their organizations align emotional intelligence, instinctive strengths, and tangible conscious leadership practices at both the individual and collective level. Her experience stretches across many sectors including nonprofits, startups, corporations, and government.
She coaches/consults globally and lives in Wisconsin, after calling Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon home for many years.
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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.
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
