Kylie Penn
Kylie Penn
Sr Director, Talent Acquisition - GeneDx
Like many leaders in talent acquisition, Kylie Penn never originally planned to build a career in recruiting.
Her journey into talent acquisition began while she was preparing to graduate and trying to determine what direction she wanted to pursue professionally.
During that time, she started participating in job shadowing opportunities through friends and family connections. One of those opportunities came through her brother-in-law, who worked for a recruiting agency.
That experience immediately sparked her interest.
“I loved the buzz, the excitement, the variety,” Kylie explained, reflecting on her first exposure to the recruiting industry.
Soon after, the agency offered her a role on the East Coast — a major opportunity for someone originally from Portland who had always wanted to experience living in a different part of the country.
Like many recruiting professionals, she “fell into recruiting,” but quickly discovered it was the right fit.
Building a Foundation in Recruiting
Kylie began her career in agency recruiting, where she gained an early foundation in sourcing, relationship building, candidate engagement, and talent strategy.
However, it did not take long for her to realize she wanted to move beyond agency recruiting and into an in-house corporate environment where she could help build talent functions from within.
Within her first year, she transitioned into an in-house recruiting role with one of the agency’s clients — a move that ultimately defined the direction of her career.
Since then, Kylie has built a reputation as a strategic talent acquisition leader focused on scaling teams, developing recruiting organizations, and helping businesses align talent strategy with long-term growth.
Leading with Growth, Potential, and People Development
Throughout her career, Kylie has been deeply influenced by leaders who invested in people and prioritized potential over hierarchy.
Among the leaders who had the greatest impact on her were Shelley Gourlay, Shannon Henry, and Denise Novosel — mentors and leaders she still remains close with today.
What stood out most to Kylie was their ability to see potential in others and create opportunities for people to grow into leadership.
“They gave me amazing opportunities to grow and expand,” she shared. “They helped give me the path and the voice to grow as a leader and in my career.”
That experience significantly shaped Kylie’s own leadership philosophy.
Today, she strives to create environments where people feel empowered, supported, and challenged to grow professionally while also helping organizations scale strategically.
Embracing AI with Curiosity and Action
As AI continues reshaping the recruiting landscape, Kylie believes talent acquisition leaders must approach the transformation with curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to evolve quickly.
She described AI as one of the most dominant conversations currently happening across the recruiting industry.
“Every single person I network with or talk to is discussing AI,” she explained.
Although she had exposure to automation and recruiting technology years earlier, Kylie noted that the past year has been the point where AI truly became operationalized inside talent acquisition teams.
At New Relic, she has seen recruiting teams actively embrace AI tools to remove administrative burdens, streamline workflows, and create greater operational efficiency.
According to Kylie, AI has significantly accelerated tasks that previously consumed major portions of recruiters’ time, including:
Writing and refining job descriptions
Building Boolean search strings
Creating interview guides
Generating recruiting insights
Streamlining sourcing workflows
Reducing repetitive administrative tasks
She believes these efficiencies allow recruiters to spend more time acting as strategic advisors to the business rather than operating solely as process managers.
For Kylie, AI is not simply about automation — it is about enabling recruiting teams to become more strategic, proactive, and business-focused.
Advice for Talent Leaders Navigating AI
Kylie encourages recruiting leaders to begin exploring AI immediately, even if they start with small use cases.
Her message is simple: “Start somewhere.”
Whether that means experimenting with job descriptions, sourcing workflows, interview frameworks, or talent insights, she believes taking action now is critical.
“I really think the people who aren’t exploring it are going to fall behind more quickly,” she explained.
Rather than waiting for a perfect strategy, Kylie advises leaders to build cultures centered around experimentation, learning, and adaptability.
Her advice to talent leaders includes:
Lead with curiosity
Maintain a growth mindset
Experiment and fail fast
Share learnings openly with teams
Create environments for best-practice collaboration
Use AI to remove low-value administrative work
Focus recruiters on strategic business impact
She also emphasizes the importance of leadership visibility during periods of transformation.
According to Kylie, recruiting leaders must model exploration and learning themselves in order to create confidence across their teams.
“Lead by example,” she shared. “Show your team how you are trying things out.”
Building the Future of Strategic Talent Acquisition
Kylie believes the future of recruiting will belong to organizations and leaders who can combine technology, strategic thinking, and people-centered leadership.
As AI continues accelerating the pace of change, she sees talent acquisition evolving far beyond transactional hiring.
Instead, recruiters will increasingly operate as strategic business advisors who influence workforce planning, organizational capability, talent branding, and long-term growth strategy.
At the same time, Kylie remains deeply committed to the human side of leadership — mentoring others, creating opportunities for growth, and helping recruiting teams operate at their highest potential.
For Kylie Penn, the future of talent acquisition is not just about hiring talent.
It is about building stronger organizations, empowering people, and creating recruiting functions that can adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world.
