Akeem Joseph
Flywire
“Being AI native is going to be as standard as having a degree.”
Akeem Joseph has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 leaders in each category of talent acquisition. Honorees are nominated by peers or found by committees that look for excellent work wherever it happens, then chosen for the depth of their craft and their impact on hiring. This is Akeem's story.
The pitch had to be good enough to survive a switchboard operator, a stranger's voicemail box and the long odds of a return call, because in the years before LinkedIn that was the entire sourcing stack. Akeem Joseph learned the craft in that environment and now runs talent acquisition worldwide for Flywire (NASDAQ: FLYW), where the same instinct has been rebuilt around automation, monthly enablement sessions and a team working through AI certification.
One question has survived every change in the toolkit: how do you get to the right candidate faster than anyone else? What has changed is the machinery behind the answer. Back then the pitch was the technology, and a recruiter's edge lived entirely in preparation and persuasion. The edge now, by this talent leader's reading, belongs to teams that automate the mechanical work and reinvest the recovered hours in judgment.
A Decade Spent Learning the Business of People
Before moving in house, Joseph spent more than a decade on the agency, executive search and consultancy side of the profession, concentrating on high growth technology companies and biotech firms. It was not an accidental landing so much as a good fit discovered early. As a business major fresh out of school, the prospect of joining a consultancy that hired globally was genuinely intriguing, and the work turned out to sit squarely on strengths that were already there.
What made it durable was the human stake. Any career change is a significant life decision, and being part of that decision proved both rewarding and intellectually interesting. The chance to support clients globally rather than only domestically ran through that entire stretch of ten-plus years, and it is the same terrain the Flywire VP operates on today, only from the other side of the table.
What AI Native Actually Means
Joseph is an enthusiastic proponent of AI, but the enthusiasm is precise. The value is acceleration, enhanced productivity and, above all, reaching the candidate faster in a competitive market. Working smarter creates room to be more strategic, and that is the return being chased.
The technology has evolved noticeably over roughly eight years and accelerated sharply in the last three, with the human resources side transformed in the last three to five by an expanding set of tools, the arrival of vibe coding and new models shipping weekly. That pace has raised the bar on what counts as fluency. At Flywire, the expectation that the company hires the best talent runs from the board and executive team through the CEO, and Joseph argues the best talent is now AI native by definition. The test is not whether someone uses ChatGPT or writes a prompt. The real questions are sharper: what are you automating, what are you building, and what does AI leadership actually look like in your hands?
The Monthly Round Table
The first piece of advice Joseph offers other talent leaders is blunt and operational: make sure the team is trained. That means regular AI enablement sessions rather than open ended encouragement. One runs every month, a round table that includes not only recruiters but coordination as well, where the group works through how each person is leveraging AI and what the knowledge transfer looks like.
The design reflects a hard-won read on how behavior actually changes. A leader issuing a broad directive to use AI does not always resonate or land. Peers describing what worked for them, especially peers who are making hires with it, create a domino effect. The same clarity governs how new technology gets judged in the function. Impact is measured in hires, and anything that cannot demonstrate that is worth reexamining.
Preparing People for the Next Opportunity
The second initiative is more ambitious. Every member of the team is being AI certified, with certification written directly into individual development plans and currently in progress. The reasoning connects to a broader conviction: being AI native will soon be as standard a credential as a degree, and credibility requires proof rather than assertion.
Underneath that sits a philosophy of management stated without hedging. A leader's responsibility is to prepare the team for the next opportunity, whether that opportunity is internal or external. The certification push serves both ends at once, building confidence in people now and equipping them for whatever comes next. It is the same instinct those early mentors modeled decades ago, translated for an industry where the tools change weekly and the obligation to pass along what works does not.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Akeem. We are honored to welcome Akeem Joseph to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Akeem. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
