About

The people behind HireGains.ai

We’re not technologists guessing at hiring. We’re hiring leaders who built the technology. We’ve run high-volume talent acquisition across healthcare, retail, hospitality and financial services, so we know what happens when a team needs 200 people by next month and half of them are gone by month three. That’s why we built the tool we wished we’d had, grounded in how people actually decide to stay: an honest conversation with applicants, employees and leavers, and a focus on capability and compatibility that holds up long after day one.

Leadership

Built by operators who've done the work.

Tessa James

Tessa James

CEO & Co-Founder

Tess fuses deep life sciences expertise with psychology and HR technology to reshape how organizations understand and deploy talent. Her work focuses on complex, regulated environments where human judgment, precision, and sustainability directly impact outcomes.

Read on Substack
Randy Gulian

Randy Gulian

Chairman & Co-Founder

Randy brings deep operating and leadership experience across financial services and healthcare to building technology-enabled human capital platforms. He has led global recruiting operations at scale - from executive search to a 3,500-person RPO spanning 60 countries.

Gediminas Pukys

Gediminas Pukys

Head of AI Development

Gediminas brings over a decade of data engineering and analytics leadership to the design of the HireGains conversation. He leads voice AI globally for an international tech consultancy, after eight years building the data pipelines and models for a marketplace tech platform.

Alison Untiedt

Alison Untiedt

SVP Talent Solutions

Alison brings more than 20 years of talent acquisition leadership, executive search, and workforce solutions across Fortune 500 organizations. She was Talent Acquisition Director at The Hartford and led engagements at Allegis Global Solutions supporting Mastercard and GE Consumer Finance.

Howard Kaplin

Howard Kaplin

SVP Talent Solutions

Howard brings extensive talent and business development experience to HireGains' commercial side, from technical recruiting to enterprise workforce programs. He has built employer partnerships across Fortune 500 IT organizations, staffing firms and tech education platforms.

Jay Schupp

Jay Schupp

SVP Talent Solutions

Jay brings three decades of workforce leadership to HireGains' commercial side, from the people looking for work to the organizations trying to keep them. He has held senior roles at AMN Healthcare, Care.com, Monster, Pontoon and Bartech across healthcare and the Fortune 1000.

Advisory Board

Guided by people shaping the future of work.

Bruce Morton

Bruce Morton

Advisory Board

Four decades of experience in workforce strategy and talent design, advising global organizations on complex resourcing models and operating structures.

David Ballew

David Ballew

Advisory Board

Founder and CEO of Nimble Global. Advises on compliance, scalable workforce design, and building resilient, future-ready talent systems.

John Healy

John Healy

Advisory Board

Chief Executive of Whrrr.work. A leading strategist shaping global labour markets, advising Global 2000 companies on workforce transformation and ethical innovation.

Karen Brown

Karen Brown

Advisory Board

A leading DEI strategist who drives business value by amplifying diverse voices and designing systems that unlock equitable performance. Published in Harvard Business Review.

Dr. Mike Steger

Dr. Mike Steger

Advisory Board

A leading expert on meaning, purpose, and psychological strengths at work - 140+ peer-reviewed publications and multiple foundational books in positive psychology.

Shelton Guinn

Shelton Guinn

Advisory Board

A strategic operator known for building high-performance teams and transforming human capital strategy into measurable business results.

Our Mission

Help people-facing, customer-facing, and frontline teams hire the right person for the shift, and keep more of them.

Every unit, branch, and floor has its own rhythm. We learn it from the people doing the work, bring the same honest conversation to every applicant, and return after day one to understand what helps people stay.