The cavnessHR podcast

Amir Bormand is the Co-founder of Elevano, a California- based recruitment company, who helps hundreds of people find more fulfilling jobs every year.

Amir is unique to the recruiting industry because he is a former engineer himself— and could still jot out a few lines of code! He’s seen the technical recruiting game from both sides, and during his engineering career, he constantly saw agency recruiters take shortcuts and use deceptive practices all for their own benefit.

That’s why, in his current position as Co-founder of Elevano, he encourages a candidate-centric approach to every aspect of technical recruiting and sales. His overriding desire is to smash the negative stigma left by current recruitment strategies, and replace it with a more transparent, honest and empathetic service offering.

When he’s not working, Amir enjoys spending time with his families and traveling. He and his wife have a 5-year-old daughter, who keeps him busy with the latest trends in Disney cartoons... You might just catch him humming Disney movie theme songs!

Reena Gupta a serial entrepreneur and philanthropist, interestingly dove into entrepreneurship when most women take a career break, after her first child was born. Her first foray into entrepreneurship started with a staffing company, Avankia, following which she established a technology company, TargetRecruit. At TargetRecruit, she  achieved many milestones in the Salesforce Ecosystem, including being the first to be incubated by Salesforce and developing the first ATS and WMS on Salesforce platform. She successfully exited from TargetRecruit in early 2018.

As a leader in the technology SMB space, Reena’s passion has always been to give back to community. Recognizing the gap in job opportunities for stay at home moms, she started Mom Relaunch - an organization that empowers women on a career break to get back into the workforce, with a focus on IT and HR. She finds fulfillment in transforming the lives of women and enabling them to be financially independent. An active advocate and spokesperson on entrepreneurship, she mentors and nurtures the next generation of entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley Youth Coders Club. Reena also leads a Salesforce Women In Tech (WIT) Users Group, with the aim of fostering a network of like-minded women to learn and exchange ideas.

Reena has been featured as CRN’s 2016 Women of the Channel, in Entrepreneur Magazine, Power 50 Solution Providers and much more. She is a regular speaker at various Women In STEM conferences, was one of the three finalists of DreamPitch - a Salesforce event - and has her interviews published at  WinWin@Work, B2B Next, The Other 50% and many other online and print media. Mom Relaunch was also shortlisted as one of the top 10 companies for the startup pitch contest at Grace Hopper conference in Sept 2018.

For Reena, success is beyond setting up a profitable business; it is being able to give back to the community and to do her bit for women who need support. She plans to continue supporting and mentoring women who want to rejoin the workforce or who are seeking to embark on their entrepreneurship journey, acting as the voice of evangelism for these women.

 Sapna brings more than two decades of international management consultant experience in sales and business operations in the technology, financial services and telecommunication industries. She started her career at Accenture and became the global business change in organizational practice lead. She also teaches introduction of management consultancy at George Brown College in Toronto. She is also a globally recognized Certified Management Consultant and Charter Professor Accountant. She truly believes that education and awareness are instrumental in overcoming any obstacles and perception challenges, both globally and locally. She started the CanInnovate podcast, focused on Canadian innovators that have changed the game and hosting massive classes deepen our knowledge and skills. You can find her walking, hiking and exploring new areas and trying to win the Aunt of the year award and discovering new places to brunch and inventing her new recipes.  

Mary Pat Knight is a Leadership Transformation and Emotional Intelligence expert.  Her 30-year career has spanned executive leadership positions in marketing, operations, strategic planning, human resources, development and executive coaching. 

Drawing on her C-level experience, she has developed a simple, yet powerful system for creating Emotional Intelligence that creates healthy teams, inspires leaders and transforms cultures.  Thousands of clients have experienced powerful life and business transformation by committing to this system.

Mary Pat is the Founder and CEO of Leaders Inspired, helping leaders lead from the heart while creating phenomenal business results.

Melissa Strawn is the CEO & Founder of MyPeopleNow.com - a worker-first gig community for discovering new service providers and the inspiring stories behind why they do what they do. Melissa blogs at FromWelfareToMillionaire.org and is on a mission to transform the social services system into one that encourages and supports efforts toward meaningful self-sufficiency.

Chris Schmitt recently retired from 30 years of service as a United States Army Special Forces “Green Beret.” Since retiring, he has successful founded his own company, Azimuth Consulting Group, to capture the lessons learned from Special Forces in combat and seamlessly translate them to the corporate sector. Chris speaks on his experiences as a career Green Beret and how “kindness” was the most effective weapon in his kit bag. He conducts face-to-face executive coaching and advising with leaders from Fortune 500 Companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Saks Fifth Avenue, Hudson Bay Company, and Costco Wholesale and International Not-for-Profits like The Nature Conservancy. Additionally, he facilitates leadership workshops and leads a wilderness-based leadership development treks called “The Traverse.” 

 Colin is the owner of Beyond Social Conditioning. This is his coaching company where he focusses on your perfect self. This is the rawest and most pure version of you.  Simply imagine that you’re alone on this planet, there is nothing left, no parents, no teachers, no friends, nothing.    How would you behave differently? if nobody judges you and the only person you need to make happy, fulfilled, and at peace is the person in the mirror.  (Dramatic pause ;) )    

He believes that big changes don’t have to take longer than 12 weeks and is a true expert in creating measurable behavioral change that’s aimed towards your perfect self.

This is episode zero of the cavnessHR Culture Podcast - Our host will be Daniella Young who is the Senior Development and Cultural Strategy Advisor for cavnessHR. Dainella will interview stand out leaders across industries and sectors to learn their best shared secrets for cultivating culture and developing the leaders of tomorrow.

Daniella Young is an organizational behavior and culture strategy advisor and a renowned international speaker and leadership coach. She helps CEOs and business leaders develop and employ an intentional growth culture strategy in their organizations. She gets very granular with her clients on how to strategize and execute a culture strategy, as well as how to employ tools, tactics and checkpoints along the way. So that they don’t get off track. Daniella has unparalleled insights into Organizational Behavior from real world experience. 

 Alicia is a founder and CEO of Equilibria, a 14 year old operations management firm, specializing in business infrastructure for fast growing small business. It's here where she first formulated the KasennuTM methodology for business infrastructure. She has since successfully applied this method in over 30 different industries and counting. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Louisiana State University, and an MBA from Tulane university. She is also certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and has authored over 23 articles, case studies, videos, and white papers in the areas of business infrastructure, process improvement, and operational excellence. As part of a mission to provide access to operations resources for small businesses. She has started and hosts a weekly business infrastructure, Curing Back Office Blues podcast. Her most recent accomplishment lies in her new book, "Behind the Facade: How to Structure Automated Company Operations for Sustainable Success?" Was debuted on Amazon as a number one new release for business books in the production operations category. She is committed to do the right things right away. Her mantra is, "Leave it better than you found it."  

CEO and founder of Talent Function, Elaine Orler has been developing and implementing HR solutions since 1993. With a keen analytical eye and passion about helping companies enhance their talent acquisition processes, she is uniquely able to identify how talent acquisition impacts both workforces and employers. One of the talent acquisition industry’s most sought-after thought leaders, Elaine has helped global organizations transform their recruiting processes with actionable strategies and technology implementations that optimize talent acquisition for HR professionals, hiring managers, job candidates and the company overall.

Often quoted in leading HR and business publications, including Wall Street Journal, Human Resource Executive, and Talent Management, Elaine is well-respected as a talent acquisition and talent management expert and takes an active role in industry events and associations.

Elaine is always tuned into the latest trends and is the former Conference Chair of the Recruiting Trends and Talent Tech Conference. She continually works with practitioners and serves an analyst to the solution provider community to shape the way talent management and recruiting solutions are delivered. She is invested in all aspects of the market that improve recruiting performance from candidate experience (co-founder of Talent Board, the founding organization of the Candidate Experience Awards) to optimal candidate selection with TalVista (owner).

She has presented one-of-a-kind recruiting and candidate experience thought leadership at some of the industry’s most innovative and popular events, including the HR Technology Conference, the SHRM Annual Conference, ERE, and HRO Today Forum among others.