Christina Garvey
Fastly
“My network got me to where I am today.”
Christina Garvey has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 of the most exceptional leaders and practitioners in each category of 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 Christina's story.
Eight years into a career in telecom retail leadership, Christina Garvey was working 80 hours a week, seven days a week, and facing a decision about what the next chapter should look like. She kept the part of the job she loved most, hiring talent, developing talent, leading talent, and left the rest behind. That choice has carried her through more than a decade in recruiting and early careers, and into Fastly, where she was recruited specifically to build an early careers program from scratch.
Ask her how it happened and the answer arrives without hesitation. "My network got me to where I am today," she says. It is not a throwaway line. Every meaningful transition in her career, from telecom into staffing and recruiting, from staffing into her first corporate role, and from there into the program she runs today, arrived through a person who knew her, believed in her, and made an introduction. She talks about the people ecosystem the way other leaders talk about pipelines: as something you invest in long before you need it.
Turning Down the Noise
Garvey was both a speaker and an attendee at the URx Conference a few weeks before this profile, where artificial intelligence dominated the agenda across every corner of early careers: industry peers, campus partners, programs, and systems. The group's ambition, as she describes it, was to turn down the noise and get honest about what everyone was actually seeing.
What they were seeing, she says, was misinformation traveling in every direction at once. Nobody is quite sure how candidates are using AI, or how they will be expected to use it at the company they are applying to. Campus tells students one thing. Students tell employers another. Employers tell students something else again. Her answer is unglamorous and effective: set realistic expectations up front, talk openly with applicants about how the company uses AI and how it wants them to use it, and treat the conversation as mutual learning rather than enforcement.
The same fragmentation shows up inside organizations. Individual recruiters build their own AI workflows and their own private processes, while the rest of the business builds something entirely different. Garvey's focus is consistency: a genuine, shared understanding of how a team and a business can use these tools effectively. As she puts it, the goal is getting everybody onto the same AI playing field.
An AI-Forward Mindset
Her advice to other talent leaders is the advice she is currently giving herself. Have an AI-forward mindset, not a restrictive one. Stay open to what working with AI can do for workflows, processes, and efficiency, and not only in your own work but across your team, in how you partner with the business, and in how you meet the candidate. "Just being open is like the number one advice," she says. It is a notably generous position from someone whose career has been built on human judgment. Garvey is a leader who has been on the receiving end of open minds, from people who gave her time and from hiring leaders who defended her potential in rooms full of people counting years of experience. She has spent the decade since paying it forward, in early careers programs, in a leaders group chat crowded with peers she is quick to champion, and in an annual URx gathering she recommends to anyone in the field. Her career is the argument for her method: talent is a network, and networks are built by people who make time.
"Just being open is like the number one advice," she says. It is a notably generous position from someone whose career has been built on human judgment, and it is consistent with everything else about her. Garvey is a leader who has been on the receiving end of open minds twice, from a stranger at a networking group who gave her an hour, and from a hiring leader who defended her potential in a room full of people counting years of experience. She has spent the decade since paying it forward, in early careers programs, in a leaders group chat crowded with peers she is quick to champion, and in an annual URx gathering she recommends to anyone in the field. Her career is the argument for her method: talent is a network, and networks are built by people who make time.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Christina. We are honored to welcome Christina Garvey to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Christina. 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.
