Heather Colvin

Eleven Years, Then a Two Week Window

Before recruiting, Colvin spent roughly 11 years at a single company. Toward the end of that run she began asking a question she now recognizes as the beginning of everything: how does someone move? She is a faith-based person, and she leaned on that faith while trying to work out a path forward. At the time she simply did not have the playbook. "I didn't understand what I know today about how to find opportunity, how to land new jobs," she says. What she did know was the kind of place she wanted to land in next: somewhere with no ceiling on creativity, knowledge or growth.

The move, when it came, was not one she chose. Colvin was laid off after those 11 years. Her sister's reaction was immediate and, in hindsight, clarifying: you wouldn't have left unless they kicked you out. Colvin agrees with the read. She had no map for leaving on her own.

What followed was a two week window in which she could either take another role inside the organization or accept severance and go. Inside that window, an aunt heard that a small firm was looking for a recruiting coordinator and offered a line that changed the trajectory: oddly, my niece is actually available. Colvin interviewed. She got the job. She has been scaling ever since. It is a story she tells without varnish, because the point is not the disruption. The point is that a two week window was enough.

The Three Who Paved the Way

Ask Colvin to name the leaders who shaped her and her first instinct is to protest the limit. The list, she says, could run long. Narrowed to three, each one represents a different kind of support.

First is Tabitha Cavanaugh, VP of Recruiting at the Sales Collective, whom Colvin met later in her career and who is now her best friend. Cavanaugh's contribution is alignment. She has a robust network and opens doors that match what Colvin is actually trying to build rather than doors for their own sake. She is also, in Colvin's words, her sister in Christ, which means she keeps Colvin's faith and her ambition moving in parallel rather than in competition as her career scales.

Second is Brian Fink, who has since launched his own firm. Fink checks in offline, unprompted, with positive messages and a reliable instinct for leveling her up. He is also, in Colvin's telling, the guru of studying the game. "You have to be surrounded by people who are in the same game, but some people are studying it differently," she says. Fink plays with every tool, and his experimentation helps her decide where to invest her own time next, which is one of the scarcest resources any talent leader has.

Third is Steve Levy, who gave her something less tangible and no less useful: the confidence to say yes. Colvin describes a threshold many practitioners hit, where others begin to recognize value in you before you are entirely convinced yourself, and where the next step means virtual stages and physical stages. Levy was the catalyst who told her, plainly, to just do it. She still returns to that on the days resistance shows up. Her own counterargument to imposter syndrome is her origin story. She came from zero connections and knowing nobody, and the people she once wondered how to reach are now friends. "You got here, you deserve to be here, and you deserve to get to the next level."

The Observer's Approach to AI

On artificial intelligence, Colvin is deliberately unhurried, and she says so without apology. The past year has brought a rollout of tools and a rush by organizations to work out how to implement them inside their ecosystems. Her instinct is to watch first. "I typically like to sit back and observe and then take action," she says.

That makes her an unusual voice in a conversation dominated by early adopters, and she knows it. Coming out of the tech space, her standard for a tool is high, and she has not yet been convinced that what is currently on the market truly delivers what it claims for the work she does. It is a discipline rather than a resistance. Colvin surrounds herself with people like Fink precisely so that she has a trusted read on what is worth her attention, then commits when the evidence is there. In a market where adoption pressure often outruns proof, a leader willing to observe carefully before spending her team's time is doing something closer to stewardship than skepticism.

What She Passes Forward

The through line of Colvin's career is access, and she is unusually clear-eyed about how it gets built. Networks are not inherited. Confidence is not issued. Both are constructed by people who decide to start, often from a position of knowing nothing and nobody, and then keep going long enough to become the person others reach out to.

So the advice she embodies is the advice she received and now repeats: say yes before you feel ready, and choose your circle for what it teaches you. Colvin's own list of mentors is really a list of functions. Someone to keep you aligned with your vision and your values. Someone studying the game harder than you are. Someone who tells you to get on the stage. Assemble those three and the ceiling she once went looking for stops being a ceiling at all.