Kevin Womack
Thomson Reuters
“AI should remove clicks, not judgment.”
Kevin Womack 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 Kevin's story.
Kevin Womack's path into talent started the way many of the strongest recruiting careers do: by solving a real business problem and realizing the hardest part was finding the right people to execute it. Early in his career, he worked as a business analyst at a small company trying to automate the handoff between inside sales and outside sales. He designed the solution, then ran straight into a second, harder challenge. He needed capable technical talent, and the work was not full time.
A friend in staffing walked him through contract recruiting and billing mechanics, and with that came the realization that would shape everything after it: helping companies hire was itself a scalable business. That moment became his entry point into recruiting.
Building and Selling Staffing Firms
From there, Kevin built an uncommon foundation as a staffing entrepreneur. He helped start and scale multiple staffing firms, building full desk recruiting teams, placing technical talent, and creating real revenue engines from scratch. Across three separate ventures, he learned what it means to build without a safety net: win clients, fill roles, hire recruiters, build systems, and repeat.
Over time, each company was successfully sold, giving Kevin firsthand experience in scaling, operating, and exiting recruiting businesses. Those years shaped the bias he still carries today toward speed, iteration, and practical execution.
Choosing the Work Over the Title
That entrepreneurial background eventually brought Kevin to one of his largest clients: Indeed. When Indeed interviewed him, the company initially considered him for a senior leadership role. Kevin took a different approach and asked to join as an individual contributor recruiter instead. Less title, less pay, more proximity to the work. He wanted to understand the corporate environment from the ground up, feel the friction himself, and earn leadership organically.
The decision paid off quickly. Kevin joined Indeed at roughly 1,500 employees and stayed through massive growth to nearly 15,000, progressing from recruiter to global delivery leader and helping build sourcing, coordination, programs, analytics, DEI, and the infrastructure required to hire at scale.
After Indeed, Kevin took on a global leadership role at Opendoor, overseeing nearly every part of talent acquisition and operations. Recruiting, sourcing, coordination, programs, employer branding, DEI, and operations all sat under his remit, and the role reinforced a consistent theme in his career: build systems that make teams faster without losing the human center of recruiting.
Building at Thomson Reuters
Today, Kevin leads talent acquisition at Thomson Reuters, based in the Dallas Fort Worth area. The scope is large, but what excites him most is the ability to build. Despite being a 27,000 person organization, Thomson Reuters embraces a zero to one mindset, encouraging teams to experiment, iterate, and move quickly.
He is especially energized by the intersection of talent and AI. With access to a broad internal AI ecosystem and third party tools, he has helped build recruiter summaries, resume analysis workflows, and pilot programs like BrightHire that reduce administrative work and improve hiring quality. His philosophy is simple: AI should remove clicks, not judgment. The goal is faster processes and better decisions, not replacing the recruiter.
Where the Craft Is Heading
Kevin has watched AI move rapidly across recruiting, particularly in resume evaluation, summarization, and scheduling. Those tools save time and remove administrative drag, but they do not touch the most important part of the role. As automation increases, recruiting becomes more advisory: less order taking, more strategy, more time partnering with hiring managers, shaping talent plans, and building trust with candidates.
His advice for 2026 follows the same logic. Experiment often, fail fast, iterate faster, because progress belongs to leaders who test tools, run pilots, learn quickly, and improve continuously rather than waiting for perfect conditions. Use AI to remove friction, not replace judgment, letting it handle repetitive work like summarizing, evaluating, and scheduling so recruiters can focus on higher impact decisions. And protect relationships at all costs, because technology should never come at the expense of trust.
Kevin's career blends entrepreneurship, hypergrowth scaling, and modern talent innovation. Across every chapter, one theme holds steady: build systems that help people do their best work, move quickly, learn constantly, and never forget that recruiting is still a relationship business at its core.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Kevin. We are honored to welcome Kevin Womack to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Kevin. 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.
