Mary Price
Penfield Talent
“People are the reason companies are successful. Build a strong team, and you will build a strong company.”
Mary Price 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 Mary's story.
Mary Price, Founder of Penfield Talent, began her recruiting career inside Apple's retail organization, at a moment when the company was taking a hard look at the talent already standing behind its own counters. Apple's leadership recognized that Apple's retail stores were filled with strong talent, and they wondered what might happen if some of that talent had the opportunity to gain corporate experience. That idea became the Apple Retail to Corporate Exchange Program.
The program opened 25 roles, and one of them was for a recruiter. Mary had never officially worked in recruiting, but as a people manager in the Apple store she had already been hiring, onboarding, and training team members. When she saw the posting, something clicked. “That recruiter role really sounded like me,” Mary recalls.
There was conviction underneath the instinct. She loved Apple and felt a responsibility to help protect the company by bringing in the right people, a belief that has anchored her work ever since. “People are the reason companies are successful,” she says. “Build a strong team, and you will build a strong company.” Mary was selected for the program, and that became the beginning of her recruiting career.
Automation, Efficiency, and Experimentation
As AI and new technologies reshape recruiting, Mary sees three major themes: automation, efficiency, and experimentation. Automation, in her view, starts with companies identifying where manual steps can be removed from the process. One example from her own team was onboarding, where by working with HRIS partners they helped create a smoother handoff from Greenhouse to Workday so that onboarding could begin automatically before a new hire's start date. “It's like a relay race,” Mary says. “As the baton is getting handed off to the next team, it doesn't drop.”
Efficiency has also become increasingly important, especially as teams are asked to do more with fewer resources. At OneTrust, Mary's team experimented with an internal bot that could search SharePoint pages, talent pages, documents, and internal resources to answer common questions. That helped reduce the burden on recruiting operations and allowed the team to focus on more strategic work.
Experimentation, meanwhile, became a team sport. Her team ran a recruiter hackathon using AI to generate creative solutions, and one idea became a hiring manager training and onboarding program focused on setting standards for hiring.
Solving Problems with AI
Mary believes AI should not be adopted just because it is the latest trend. Instead, she encourages talent leaders to focus on real problems. “I would really push teams to experiment with solving problems,” she says. For Mary, that means giving teams space to learn, experiment, and use AI thoughtfully.
It also means raising the ceiling on what teams are asked to attempt. Rather than simply asking people to use ChatGPT prompts, she believes leaders should challenge teams to think bigger: Can they create an agent? Can they build a bot? Can they automate a workflow? The people closest to the work often understand the problems best. “Have them be part of the solution,” she says.
Advice for Talent Leaders Heading into 2026
As talent teams move further into 2026, Mary encourages leaders not to chase every new trend. AI adoption is moving quickly, but speed alone should not be the goal. Leaders should encourage learning, experimentation, and problem-solving while staying grounded in the real needs of the business and the people doing the work.
Most importantly, she believes talent leaders must protect human judgment. “Don't ever let the temptation of efficiency replace human judgment,” she says. For Mary, recruiting is still about people working with people. AI can help automate tasks, improve efficiency, and support better workflows, but it should not replace the human judgment required to fill roles thoughtfully.
By combining curiosity, experimentation, operational discipline, and a deep respect for human decision-making, Mary Price represents the kind of talent leader helping recruiting move forward without losing sight of what makes the work meaningful.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Mary. We are honored to welcome Mary Price to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Mary. 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.
