Kristen Diorio

From the Campus to the Company

Diorio spent roughly fifteen years in higher education, working at a number of different universities, before she began looking for something new. The pivot was not effortless. Like many people trying to translate a specialized career into corporate language, she found the shift genuinely difficult, and she did something about it: she hired a career coach who helped her rebuild her resume and articulate exactly where her experience crossed over into a corporate environment.

The opening that followed was almost poetic in its symmetry. She applied for a contract position at Johnson & Johnson supporting the company's university co-op and intern program. "For me it was a nice correlation between working with college students at the college to then working with them here at Johnson & Johnson," she says. She entered as a contract coordinator. From there she advanced through the university recruiting space as a full professional at J&J, then moved into professional recruiting, and eventually into the acquisitions and divestitures work she does today. It is a trajectory built entirely on performance rather than pedigree, and it gives her an unusual credibility when she talks about what a career change actually requires.

The Leader Who Said Yes

Ask Diorio who shaped her and one name arrives first: Virginia Powell, one of her earliest supervisors, to whom she reported for about eight years at J&J. The two followed each other through a number of roles, an arrangement that only happens when a leader and a rising talent genuinely believe in each other.

What Powell gave her was permission. "Anytime I said I was interested in something or raised my hand and said, hey, I want to explore this area, she would find a way to get me involved," Diorio recalls. That habit of saying yes compounded over the years. It let Diorio explore unfamiliar territory, take on larger projects, and build the exposure she needed to move upward. It is not a coincidence that Diorio's own advice to leaders now centers on taking chances and giving people room.

She is quick to widen the credit beyond one person. Every leader she has worked under, she says, has contributed a different experience and a different view of how to work with people. She extends the same gratitude to her cross-functional partners in systems and operations, the colleagues who taught her the nuts and bolts that, in her words, "as a day-to-day recruiter sometimes you don't realize are happening behind the scenes."

AI as a Tool, Not a Threat

Diorio has little patience for the anxiety spiral surrounding artificial intelligence in talent acquisition, and her rebuttal is bracing rather than dismissive. If a recruiter is strong, she argues, AI becomes an instrument in their hands. If a recruiter genuinely believes a machine could replace them, that is diagnostic information: "there's something else we need to do to increase your skill set and the value you bring."

Her view of what the technology is actually good for is specific. It can accelerate market insight, helping a recruiter walk into a conversation with an unfamiliar hiring manager or a business line they have never supported and actually understand the roles in question. It can absorb the administrative undertow of the job: pulling reports, summarizing meetings, drafting correspondence. But Diorio pushes past efficiency toward something more interesting, which is education. The real value, she believes, lies in how these tools help recruiters learn, and then help recruiters teach their hiring managers.

And she insists the candidate belongs in that equation. "We always need to be the advocate for the applicant as well," she says, describing how the right tools can help a recruiter unpack an unconventional background and present its value persuasively to the business. In her framing, AI is not a filter designed to narrow the field. It is a means of making sure the right people get a fair hearing.

Move Before You Are Forced To

Asked what she would tell fellow talent leaders, Diorio lands on agility, and she defines it with unusual precision. Every process has must-haves and must-dos, the non-negotiables that keep a large organization compliant and consistent. The discipline, she argues, is identifying everything that is not in that category. Where can a process be sped up? Where can a team's knowledge be deepened so they fully understand the business they are supporting? Where is flexibility available and simply unclaimed?

The corollary is a warning about timing. "You don't want to be waiting until you're told you need to do something," she says. Change arrives regardless; the only variable is whether you meet it early or absorb it late. Leaders who lean into the edge of a shift find it easier, she notes, and they end up leading in that space rather than reacting to it.

It is advice that traces neatly back to her own history: a mid-career professional who chose to be coached, retooled, and started over as a coordinator rather than waiting to be told her options had narrowed. Diorio does not talk about the leap as a hardship story. She talks about it as evidence. Change is survivable, technology is a tool, and the people worth following are the ones who find a way to say yes.