Nicole

Recruiting

Name: Nicole (Nikk, Cole, Nikki, Erin) (LinkedIn)

How to pronounce my name- Ni-cole

Gender pronouns she/her

Where did you come from? Cincinnati, Ohio

What brought you to Hustle Hunters? The human-hiring process and the atmosphere (remote) that Nikki brings to her team. Allowing me to be a mother AND a recruiter at the same time. Being authentically myself with my team and feeling like a true work family - not just someone I talk to about work stuff but a team that I relate to and talk to about all aspects of life with. Also, growth.

What do you do for fun? Lots of things, haha. I read, walk in the rain barefoot, sit in the grass on a sunny day, shop :), spend time with my family, do crafty things, clean (it’s relaxing and I love to organize), and do hair and makeup, the list goes on and on.

What are your 5 favs? Husband & kids, good food, water, affection, creativity.

Katherine

DEIB

👋🏾  Hi! I’m Katherine (🔉 LINK pronunciation) , she/her, and I’m Hustle Hunter’s intrapreneur, DEIB go-to, and your advocate! 
I’m a proud mama of two Chamorro-Panamanian-Italian children, the co-founder of Parenting Backwards, a board member of Finadene, a mission-driven social enterprise to preserve the vibrant culture from the Mariana Islands, and I love to give to my BIPOC historically excluded community. I’m most proud of working with the leaders of the City of Alameda and consulting with a committee and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan to change the name of a park from a historical racist figure to something Alameda neighbors can be proud of. LINK

I’m also an active member of Sista Circle: Black Women In Tech, a friend to Asain Leaders Alliance, a member of Black Speakers Collection, and I’m known for gathering folks to explore what synergy can erupt from the power of sharing, vulnerability, and humility. 

I started my DEIB work in 2002 as a first-generation college student and community organizer for Mujeres Ayudando La Raza and a Black student organization at the University of California, Davis. In 2010, I obtained my Master’s degree in career coaching centering historically excluded groups at San Francisco State University. Between 2014 and 2019, I served thousands of Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) clients through managing a caseload, and executing programs, and developed a DEIB strategy for The Career Center, at The University of Berkeley California.

In 2019, unplanned events, including having my firstborn, evoked to me answer the calling - what else is out there?

I took a year to travel to Guam, attended as many DEIB conferences, dinners, socials, and events to learn from, build upon and help a community I would one day look to for support and call my own. 

Now I'm at Hustle Hunter's! My relationship with the team started as an external consultant. It evolved into today's full-time leading an intimate DEIB team and working with a team who show me they're committed to making positive changes in our work.

Fun facts

✍🏽  I’m a list maker.

☕️  I’m a Cafécito crafter.

🥑  I’m a children’s book author.

Best decisions in my life

🤎  Therapy.

🙏🏾  Forgiving.

🧘🏽‍♀️  Meditating.

My safe place is near an ocean and my favorite color is sunset.

 Edie

Recruiter

Intro:

Hey there! I’m Edie (pronounced “ee-dee”, but I’m often called “ed-dee” even though that would be spelled Eddie). My pronouns are she/her.

Where are you from?

I’m a first generation Filipino-American born and raised in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I consider St. Louis (University City) my second home because that’s where we lived for 15+ years and raised our family. My husband and I now live in Evanston. All 3 kids will be in college next year, so we’re almost empty nesters.

How did you get into recruiting? 

My undergraduate degree is in Human Resources, so my college major is actually relevant to my career! My natural curiosity to learn about peoples’ career journeys led me to specialize in Talent Acquisition. My commitment to a positive candidate experience and to having a truly diverse representation within the tech industry is what keeps me motivated in my long career as a recruiter. My favorite demographic is Early Talent — I love helping young adults launch their careers. As a proud Gen Xer, I get inspiration from Millennials and Gen Z who are changing the future of work.

What brought you to Hustle Hunters?

Nikki, the founder! 

Nikki

Name: Nikki. Linkedin

How to pronounce my name: Ni-key

Gender pronouns She/her

Where did you come from? I was born and raised in Massachusetts, have spend time since in PA, CA, and now live in Portland, Oregon

What brought you to Hustle Hunters? Creating Hustle Hunters was born out of my passion for equity and experience in the startup space. Building the type of company that I’ve always wanted to work for has been an amazing journey.

What do you do for fun? Reading, sports, baths, magnatiles with my daughter

What are your 5 favs? Cooking or eating with good friends/family, fiction audiobooks where I learn a perspective different from my own, watching people giving their all to something, watching sports (esp. Women’s teams), adventuring with my husband Sam and daughter Izzy

 Josue

Recruiter

Hey! Josue (ho-sway) Cooper here and I identify as He/Him. My identity is that of a half black and half Mexican man, proudly born and raised in Inglewood, CA. During what I refer to as my 'L.A. Life' I went to Verbum Dei High School, an all boys Jesuit school. I was a three sport athlete playing Football, Basketball, and running Track. This school is very unique as it has a corporate work study program. So, at the age of 14 I began working 10 hours/week at Bank of the West. After spending 18 years where my heart will always call home, I transitioned to Newberg, OR.

Arriving in Oregon for the first time was a complete shock. Never in my life had I seen so much greenery. About an hour drive from Portland Intl. to Newberg, OR and I arrived in what seemed a martian landscape to me. Here is my college chapter of my life. I begin at George Fox University. Away from home and family at the age of 18, a real taste of independence. I was recruited to play football at GFU and played for three years. I received my Bachelors of Social Work which was motivated by a desire to help people become their best selves. During this time most of my work was focused on Criminal Justice. I grew up in Los Angeles not long after many documented cases of police misconduct. This inspired me to want to change that from within thus provoking this journey.  At this time I believed that this would be my lifelong path but little did I know things would change. 

I graduated with my BSW in April 2017. I got my first big job as a Probation & Parole office with Washington State Dept. of Corrections in December 2017. I felt like at the time, this would be my best opportunity to help people who are in a vulnerable and often misinterpreted population. As I continued my work, I began to find out more and more that a lot of the politics and red tape of government work did not allow me to truly be myself and help people as much as I would like. I then transitioned to Talent Acquisition. I left my post as a Probation & Parole Officer to take on a contract position at Nike as a Candidate Coordinator. I took a huge bet on myself leaving an ultra stable state job for a temporary contract position. 

I met amazing people and finally had some mental relief of a positive work environment at Nike but quickly transitioned out and achieved my goal of becoming a recruiter. And this brings you and I to the present day at Hustle Hunters. I hope you have enjoyed learning about me, I cannot wait to learn about you and your career goals while helping you reach them!

 Erica 

Recruiter

Hey there! I'm Erica (she/her) and I am a California native with Mexican roots! Being a California native means more to me than being born and raised. It means three or more generations of my family were born and have lived in California. It means it was one of the few states in the early 1900s where anti-miscegenation laws were not strictly enforced, meaning my ancestors were able to live there safely. It means that my family saw and was affected by migrant farming reform, the end of segregation, and the fight for Hispanic/Chicano/Latinx recognition. From a young age, I was obsessed with a few things: reading, Indiana Jones, and learning about origins. 

Reading: My love of reading (and a strong maternal guiding hand) got me out of my small Riverside County town and showed me a huge array of other lives and possibilities. This early and frequent exposure made me dream of potential for myself and what life could be. This obsession helped mold my goals and kept me interested in school, eventually leading me to be the first person in my family to go to college. 

Indiana Jones: At the University of California, Santa Cruz I majored in Anthropology. I studied archaeology, human culture, and the art of being a human outside of the context of your parents. In studying archaeology, I learned what I had often suspected: that humans are not all that different and that our composition is all the same at a molecular level. In studying human culture, I learned humans are distinct each in their own way and that these differences make everyone's cultures beautifully diverse. 

Learning origins: After graduating, I entered the mortgage industry where I worked on connecting home buyers with the right agent for their search. Two years in, I realized that the only aspects of my role I truly enjoyed were the feelings of excitement coming from buyers and the brief sense that I was helping people. I sought out a way to use my anthropology background and help people. This is where the people industry and my third obsession collide. I learned quickly that in order to be effective I had to connect with people and learn about where they come from, their career choices, and their hopes for the future. I wanted to approach people as a human and treat them that way as well. 

My new obsession: Being a human to humans! Joining Hustle Hunters in 2021 was such a natural choice. In my mind, every industry is a people industry and yet humanity is often sacrificed at various stages of the hiring process. Working with startups that have seen this pitfall and who are not afraid to embrace the mess of building well has only fueled my resolve to keep pushing for equity in talent acquisition.

Arielle

Operations

Arielle Sorenson grew up in Maine and spent summers with family in the Midwest but her love of reading and curiosity about others helped her find a third home at the local library. Not only was it an endless repository of stories, but she loved the way it was put together and how she just needed to find the right shelf in order to learn something new. 

Arielle landed a job at the college library and quickly settled on a degree in Gender Studies. Working in the various library departments gave her a greater understanding of how libraries are organized, and, more importantly, how integral information systems are. Simultaneously, gender studies gave Arielle a new lens with which to look at the world- one that didn’t center the traditional straight white male viewpoint. 

Moving into public libraries was a culmination of those shifts in thinking, along with a crash course in how to build systems that were human-centric and focused on accessibility. A newfound love of sci-fi and speculative fiction tapped into the idea that technology can help humanity do things better but only if we center the most marginalized among us. 

After a decade of working in libraries, Arielle honed into the pieces of her work that she loved the most - creative problem solving; pairing technology with humanity, and equity-driven process, and building institutional knowledge to streamline work - in order to pursue a role that gave her more flexibility and have a better work-life balance. 

When Hustle Hunters was looking to grow at the end of 2021, Arielle’s commitment to building equity into systems, pairing tech with humanity, and core value alignment made her a great fit for our Operations Manager. She’s thrilled to be able to flex her favorite skills for a company that she’s seen grow from just Nikki to the full team we have today!

Arielle lives in central Massachusetts with her spouse, Lydia. In her spare time (enabled by a better work-life balance!), Arielle is hard-pressed to go anywhere without a book but is frequently seen in thrift and antique stores looking at other people’s junk, on hikes, swimming, making art, and spending time with loved ones, her silly hound, Theo, and her snuggly 19lbs cat, Oat Bran.

​​Ashley

Recruiting Coordination + Operations

Aloha! My name is Ashley or AshMac. I am a Recruiting Coordinator here at Hustle Hunters and enjoy being an indigenous Hawaiian in the tech industry. Being an RC allows me to not only support my team but also build relationships with our candidates and clients throughout the hiring process. Being a part of a DEIB focused startup recruiting firm continues to teach me so much about human centered work. 

My journey into startups began in 2014 as a Staff Recruiter and then a Recruiting Coordinator which landed me a position at my first tech startup in San Francisco as an early hire at Ginger-one of the first on-demand digital behavioral health platforms. Breaking into tech in 2016 while scaling Ginger was daunting but also like taking a breath of fresh air. I live for the community, comradery, flexibility, and dedication to a mission that startups offer. After Ginger, seeking the perspective of a larger tech organization, I took a 6 month contract in the Talent Acquisition organization at Twitter in late 2019. News flash…I really prefer a small team startup environment. At the conclusion of my tenure directly in tech in 2020, I took some time off to recoup, re-evaluate, and get back to myself. When rising from the ashes, I was clear that I wanted to avoid burnout but still be a part of a mission-driven team. Enter Hustle Hunters in December of 2021-that feeling of fresh air is back. Everyday, I get to work with an amazing team that centers humanness when showing up, when interacting with clients and candidates, and when building together as a company. It is the first time I’ve seen diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging be woven into every thread of our work. 

Outside of work, I’m on a journey to being a first time mom! I absolutely enjoy being a big sister to my 3 siblings and aunty to 4 nephews and niece, but this journey is different. It has brought me inward and back in time as I learn in depth about pregnancy, birth, and child rearing through the lense of my Hawaiian ancestors. I still can’t actually believe that I get to be someone’s mom. 

In my downtime I LOVE to watch documentaries, true crime episodes, and listen to audiobooks & podcasts. A few of my favorite books are The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, The Past Life Perspective by Ann Barham, and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. My current favorite podcasts are Spiritual Sh*t, Good Moms Bad Choices, The Love Hour, and Moving Beyond. 

Here are some other random fun facts about me: Im a food and wine enthusiast with dreams of opening up a small neighborhood wine bar here in Hawaii, I sold small batch French and Italian wine to businesses in the Jacksonville, FL area, I hold two non tech related degrees-a bachelors in Political Science and a Masters in Criminal Justice (I wanted to be a lawyer for a long time), and I’ve moved across the Pacific Ocean 4 separate times.