Blair Bennett

From Political Consulting to Executive Search

Her first career was in political consulting, and she assumed it would lead where those careers usually lead, into lobbying. Instead it led to Korn Ferry International, where a practice leader saw a candidate worth developing rather than a resume that already matched. "It was not a planned career goal," she says, "but it ended up being something that I really enjoyed."

Twenty years on, the through line from that first chapter is easy to trace. Political consulting is a business of reading rooms, building coalitions, and understanding what motivates people to move. So is recruiting at scale. What began as an accident of networking became a discipline she has spent two decades mastering, from executive search to enterprise talent leadership at two of the largest employers on earth.

The Sponsors Who Bet Early

Ask Bennett who shaped her and she does not offer a list of tactics. She offers a pattern. "I've had bosses who have all given me different opportunities based on their belief in me," she says, and each of the three she names taught her something distinct about what belief actually costs a leader.

The first was her boss at Korn Ferry, the man who took the chance on a political consultant with no search background and then did the harder work of developing, teaching, and training her. She still uses what he taught her. The second was the head of recruiting at Walmart, who recruited her into what was then the largest company in the world because he saw drive, ambition, and experience, and who did not stop there. He became what Bennett calls a true sponsor, opening doors that had nothing to do with her job description. Through him she took a project management role supporting the President's Global Council of Women Leaders at Walmart, an assignment that put her in front of executives across the enterprise and expanded her network well beyond recruiting. That exposure led to an innovation project, which handed her a toolkit for transformation work she leans on to this day.

The third is her current leader at PepsiCo, whose path crossed hers once before at Walmart. Bennett describes someone with a genuine transformation mindset, constantly challenging the status quo, who has trusted her to build new capabilities inside the function and to sit as a strong voice on a leadership team charged with advancing it. For a self-described curious learner who likes change, likes building, and likes finding better ways of doing things, that trust has been the most valuable currency she has been handed.

Trampoline Leadership

What Bennett does with all of that is pass it forward, and she has a name for the method: trampoline leadership. The premise is simple and demanding. Give people genuine room to try new things. Be there when the attempt does not land. And understand that the bounce back can carry them higher than the first jump ever would have.

"As a leader I hope to give people the chance to take risks, be here to support them as they learn and grow," she says. It is a philosophy that only works if the leader absorbs the downside risk personally, which is precisely why she credits it to the bosses who modeled it for her. She has been the person on the trampoline. She knows what it is worth.

Fall in Love with the Challenge

Bennett sees the explosion of AI and advanced technologies as a genuine catalyst for talent acquisition, not a threat to it. Her reasoning is that recruiting has carried a set of evergreen challenges for years, and for the first time there are credible tools capable of moving them. The opportunities she names are concrete: a materially better candidate experience, more personalization in recruiting practices, and recruiters freed to operate as true talent advisors rather than transaction processors. Her teams are already using an interview companion tool that lets recruiters deliver richer insights to hiring managers, giving those managers more to work with when they make a decision.

She also sees a status opportunity for the profession. With this much innovation concentrated in one place, talent acquisition can position itself as the sub-function within HR that leads the rest of the enterprise on what change looks like.

But her method inverts the usual order of operations. Bennett refuses to let technology be the leading factor. She starts with the problem: what challenge is in front of us, and what levers do we actually have to solve it? Tools are one lever. People and their capability are another, and at PepsiCo the recruiting teams themselves are pulled in to help design solutions rather than receive them. The function is investing real time and energy in building talent advisory skills alongside the tech. "These things have to go hand in hand," she says. Her advice to other talent leaders follows directly from that: don't just chase the next shiny object. Understand the tools, but fall in love with the challenge first, then figure out how to pair your people and their capability with the right technology. The tool is never the end in itself.

The Leaders She Is Watching

Asked to name peers who deserve the spotlight, Bennett points to three people she has networked with over the years. Michael Aronson of Johnson Controls, whose deep knowledge of the recruiting space lets him spot where the function can innovate and advance, someone she credits with upping everyone's game. Brian Lenhart of American Express, who came into talent acquisition from the business itself and brings a different angle to solutions, constantly pushing to try new things. And Susanna Kennedy of WIS International, a strong networker and learner who pulls people together, generates best practice ideas, and shares them openly. That instinct toward transparency and collective improvement, Bennett says, is a genuinely valuable leadership attribute.

It is a telling set of choices. Curiosity, cross-functional perspective, and a willingness to give away what you know: the same three qualities that describe the career she has built.