Caitlin Byrnes
Audacious
“I fell into it organically. It was a business priority, and I really dug it.”
Caitlin Byrnes has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing the 100 most exceptional leaders and practitioners in talent acquisition. Honorees are selected by the Talent 100 committee from thousands of nominations and candidates across the industry, chosen for the impact of their work, the depth of their craft, and their influence on the future of recruiting. This is Caitlin's story.
Caitlin Byrnes never set out to build a career in talent acquisition, but when a Series B-stage startup needed someone to figure out hiring at scale, she discovered an unexpected calling.
She joined Gatsby just after the company closed its Series B round, brought on to do generalist operations work across non-technical functions. Her offer letter said ops. But fresh funding came with aggressive growth targets, and hiring quickly became the most urgent priority in the business. "I fell into it organically," Byrnes recalls. "It was a business priority, and I really dug it."
She had no formal recruiting background at the time, just opinions formed from years on the other side of the table as a candidate. The company took notice of her instincts anyway, and leadership told her to run with it: engineering, sales, product design, the whole spectrum of roles a scaling B2B SaaS company needs to fill. "They said, 'All right, looks like you have an affinity for this. We need to do a lot of it. We're growing. You got it. Figure it out. You can do it.'"
So she did. At an early-stage company she had the rare opportunity to build recruiting infrastructure from scratch, and eventually to develop the foundational people playbook for a scaling startup. That unexpected entry point became the foundation of a career.
Learning From Great Leaders
Byrnes points to two people in the talent community who have shaped how she thinks about the work. The first is Audra Oliva, who previously served as a talent partner at Madrona and now leads talent at a startup called Wise. "She has taught me so much," Byrnes says.
What stands out about Oliva is a rare combination: relational strength paired with systems thinking. "I think it's really special to find both in the same person," Byrnes says. Oliva has built companies from the ground up and advised organizations at various stages, and she brings the ability to see people as people rather than products of systems, then translate that humanity into a hiring machine that scales.
The second is Katherine McClure, Byrnes's teammate at Audacious, where McClure leads go-to-market efforts. Byrnes admires the relentless precision and elegance McClure brings to the work. "You know game when you see it," she says. What really stands out is how McClure shows up day after day wanting to do her very best, doing right by the companies Audacious works with, by the team, by the founders, by the candidates. "That integrity and relentlessness really makes me excited to come to work and see her every day."
The AI Shift
Byrnes sees the recruiting landscape transforming rapidly, particularly around artificial intelligence. Any startup in 2026 that isn't doing something related to AI, she believes, risks getting left behind quickly.
The most exciting development, in her view, is the potential to offload project management and administrative work. "There is a lot of just project management and admin work that goes into running a clean process in addition to the strategic work and everything else that comes into play with talent," she says. Coding was the first domain to be revolutionized by AI; delegating administrative work to AI agents represents the next frontier for talent professionals.
The promise is simple: less time on logistics, more time on strategy and human connection. It is a shift that could fundamentally change what it means to work in talent acquisition.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Caitlin. We are honored to welcome Caitlin Byrnes to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Caitlin. 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.
