Winning the Talent Wars: Recruiting & Retaining Diverse Technical Talent

In the war for technical talent, every company is looking for an edge. In this presentation, I will discuss strategies I have employed to build diverse, high-performing technical teams at multiple organizations including WPP, eBay, Zynga, Ancestry, as well as multiple start-up and venture-backed companies. From hiring the right recruiters to sourcing from the right places to asking the right interview questions, I’ll discuss some strategies for winning the talent war. I’ll also discuss some strategies for retaining key technical talent once they’ve joined your organization.

Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles is Chief Data Officer & GM, Data Solutions at Bitly. Prior to joining Bitly, she served as Chief Data Officer for companies including Ancestry.com and Zynga. Amy previously built and led the Global Data Science team at eBay. She has also served as the Chief Data Scientist for WPP, Data Alliance, where she worked across WPP’s more than 350 operating companies worldwide. She was also the Head of Media Planning at Obama for America 2012, where she was the architect of Obama’s advertising strategy and designed the campaign's analytics systems. She was named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech and one of San Francisco's Most Influential Women in Business. Most recently, she was named one of North America's Top 50 Analytics Professionals. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.