Meet the Team

Founder and CEO

blue+linkedin*

Paria founded ModelExpand to transform hiring into a more balanced, skill-based, and high-impact process—one that opens doors for exceptional talent and strengthens organizations. For nearly 15 years, she has partnered with industry leaders, HR executives, and TA teams across industries from fast-scaling startups to Fortune 500 enterprises—designing structured, data-driven recruiting strategies that improve efficiency, scalability, diversity, and quality of hire. Her work and thought leadership have been featured in Harvard Business Review, Culture Amp, and Forbes.

Over the years, she has grown ModelExpand into a team of Talent Acquisition experts who share this vision and bring innovative, practical solutions to organizations worldwide.

Paria lives in San Francisco with her husband, two kids, dog Luna, and cat Timber. Her first concert was Boyz II Men, Tevin Campbell, and Babyface—proof she may have peaked in the 90s.

Managing Director, TA Executive Leadership

blue+linkedin*

Julie is a seasoned Talent Acquisition leader with 25+ years in high-tech and biotech. Her work has included scaling eight start-up companies and she has held senior roles at Amazon and Google. At Amazon, she was recruited to lead hiring for stealth initiatives in emerging products, technology, and services—supporting software, hardware, robotics, aerospace, and clinical laboratory hiring. She enabled rapid growth by designing and executing TA strategies, building high-performing teams across the U.S., and partnering with global teams in Europe and Asia. Since then, she has led talent acquisition functions at high-growth companies, guiding teams through rapid scaling after multiple funding rounds and steering late-stage growth during global expansion.

Julie now drives hiring transformation for clients, creating strategies that accelerate growth, increase hiring velocity, and drive operational excellence.

Julie lives in the Bay Area and loves to travel internationally (20 countries and counting), attend concerts and music festivals, and bake homemade desserts for friends and family.

Managing Director, TA and People Operations Leader

blue+linkedin*

Daniel is a seasoned Talent Acquisition and People leader with deep expertise in scaling startups. He has led recruiting at high-growth companies like Alma and Policygenius, guiding teams through rapid headcount expansion.

A specialist in ATS vendor evaluation, RFP management, and end-to-end system implementation, Daniel has built and optimized recruiting tech stacks to improve workflow automations, data integrity, and reporting. Prior to their in-house leadership roles, Daniel advised early-stage companies on developing scalable TA infrastructure: designing processes, analytics, and tools that drive efficiency and data-driven hiring decisions.

With a strong operational and technical foundation, he brings the rigor of systems thinking to every engagement, ensuring TA functions can scale efficiently and deliver measurable business impact.

Daniel lives in New York and is a devoted live music fan. He’s seen Carly Rae Jepsen perform 12x (and counting).

Principal, AI and HR Tech Advisory

blue+linkedin*

Matt has worked at the forefront of Talent and HR technology for 15+ years, with expertise in recruiting operations and technology. He scaled Gem’s Professional Services function from the ground up and led their Customer Success team, helping clients integrate ATS platforms, deploy automation, and design hiring processes that improve efficiency.

He has held leadership roles at Lyft, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, where he led global talent sourcing and talent intelligence teams, and earned four U.S. recruiting technology patents.

Matt is recognized for his skill in AI talent acquisition roadmapping: identifying where AI delivers the greatest impact, selecting and implementing the right tools, and ensuring adoption, compliance, and measurable ROI.

Matt lives in San Mateo with his wife and two sons. Outside work, he enjoys coaching, traveling, and planning new life quests.

Principal, Interview Training

blue+linkedin*

Stephanie specializes in structured hiring and interview training. She has led Learning and Development programs at Amazon, Adobe, and United Airlines, and now partners with startups through ModelExpand to help teams stay aligned and maintain hiring excellence through periods of rapid expansion.

As ModelExpand’s lead for interview training, she builds interviewer capability—equipping managers with the skills to run consistent, effective, and fair interviews.

Drawing on her experience leading Amazon’s Bar Raiser program during hypergrowth, she has helped clients strengthen interviewer effectiveness and elevate hiring outcomes across their organizations.

Outside of work, Stephanie loves traveling, hiking, reading, and spending time with her grandkids. She has explored 74 countries so far, and she’s only just begun.

Senior Consultant, HR and Culture Specialist

blue+linkedin*

Olivia brings 20 years of experience in leading fast-paced, inclusive change across human resources, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing, and talent acquisition integration internationally. She taps academic research, pop culture, military strategy and more to inspire leaders to integrate equity, inclusion and happiness into their leadership practices, people processes, and business products and solutions. 

Olivia has held global executive leadership positions, including Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at a Fortune 200 technology company. She has led teams in spaces ranging from enterprise computing and video collaboration to consumer-facing music, gaming, streaming, podcasting, and sports. 

Olivia’s love language is tech gadgets and tiny tea sandwiches. Talk to her about Broadway musicals and sports photography!

Principal Talent Consultant

blue+linkedin*

Kenn "KP" Peters has led recruiting and people operations efforts for organizations of all sizes. Having cut his teeth working in politics, he staffed two presidential campaigns before getting into the startup space. After joining the NYC talent team at Google and experiencing "excellence at scale", KP started focusing on consulting with hyper-growth tech orgs, scaling and operationalizing their Talent functions and enabling them to grow from 50 to well over 500 employees. Most recently, KP was the VP of People for multiple tech startups before settling back into talent and HR consulting. 

When he isn't thinking about recruiting, KP is an avid runner, hiker, and reader. He lives in Michigan with his cat Floyd, who is also an avid hiker.

Principal, Recruiting and Sourcing

blue+linkedin*

Kim Williamson is a seasoned technical sourcing and executive talent recruiter with 20+ years of experience building high-performing engineering and R&D organizations. She has delivered senior and executive talent pipelines across frontier technology domains, including AI/ML (NLP, complex algorithms), SWE Infrastructure, SRE, Production Engineering, Ads Monetization, Quantum Computing, Cryogenics, Advanced Hardware and Systems (Electrical, Optical, Mechanical, Embedded, Firmware, Hardware Architecture), as well as Security, Privacy, Cloud, Robotics, and Industrial Automation.

Kim has led recruiting at Meta as part of the Talent Acquisition Executive Team and spent over five years at Amazon, driving executive hiring in ML, AI, Privacy, and Security. She also partnered with IonQ on quantum leadership and niche roles. Earlier, she recruited for Lab126, GoPro, TiMetra Networks (acquired by Alcatel), Procket Networks (acquired by Cisco), and Sun Microsystems, supporting work on microprocessor architecture and compiler engineering.

Kim lives in Santa Barbara, CA, and enjoys the mountains, ocean, traveling, and time with family and friends.

Principal, Technical Recruitment and Sourcing

blue+linkedin*

Steve Counterman is a seasoned Recruiting and Sourcing Leader with 15+ years of experience building engineering and product teams for some of the most innovative companies in tech. He cut his teeth at Meta, where he partnered with AI and ML leaders to scale next-generation teams, and has since helped early-stage startups in fintech, SaaS, and real estate tech make transformative hires. Known for his creative sourcing strategies and trusted founder relationships, Steve thrives at the intersection of people and innovation. His approach blends entrepreneurial hustle with a deep network, making him a go-to partner for venture-backed teams scaling from zero to one.

When he’s not recruiting, he’s performing in NYC comedy clubs. Either way, he’s working the room to fill seats.

Principal, Recruiting and Sourcing

blue+linkedin*

A 20+ year veteran in talent acquisition, Kathleen is a trusted Recruiting and Sourcing Leader known for scaling high-performing teams for innovative tech companies.

Her experience is both deep and broad, cutting her teeth at Google as one of the first recruiters leading the SRE effort, and since helping early-stage startups and established companies rapidly scale.

Kathleen specializes in full-cycle technical recruitment for roles across Software Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI, successfully placing talent from individual contributors up to C-level executives and leaders in Product, Marketing and Finance.

She is adept at building and augmenting talent functions and partners extensively with hiring executives to execute effective Talent Acquisition and DEI strategies. Her strengths lie in creative sourcing, viral networking, and expert salary negotiation, consistently delivering top-tier talent.

When she's not in the kitchen perfecting a new dish or touring a vineyard, you can find her on the court smashing a pickleball, proving her love for intense action doesn't end with watching the Eagles play football!