Speaking · Miami · Dec 4–6, 2026

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Member, Agentics Foundation All in on agentic AI

Jessica Smith · Talent, operations & signal intelligence

Talent strategy & signal intelligence

Compute · Data · Energy · AI

I don’t plan from lagging indicators like last year’s requisitions. I track where capital is flowing (funding, contracts and executive moves across 113 industries) and turn those live signals into talent market briefs, competitor talent maps and demand forecasts, so you build pipeline before the req opens.

Let’s talk Future Wealth ’26 speaker

Seeking an in-house strategic talent partner role. Selectively open to fractional engagements.

On stage · Miami

Speaking at Future Wealth ’26

December 4–6, 2026 · Hyatt Regency Miami. Three days, two stages, 500+ founders, investors and operators on where capital, AI and energy are heading next.

Jessica Smith Founder, Savant

Panel · Future Stage

Saturday, Dec 5 · Time to be announced

The $30 Trillion Handover

A panel on the generational wealth transfer and what it means for capital, companies and the talent they will need.

The Lab · Solo session

Sunday, Dec 6 · 12:15–12:40 PM

The next era in agentic AI will belong to those who own the data and signal intelligence

Why proprietary signal, not model access, becomes the moat, and how operators can start building theirs now.

Session times follow the published agenda and may shift before the event.

View speaker page Full agenda

Systems-based thinker Lean operator Predictive talent mapping Player-coach

Systems-based talent strategy and operations leader with 12+ years in technical recruitment, founder-operator and former CGO. I apply Lean principles across departments, removing waste from hiring and making the tradeoffs between speed, quality and cost explicit.

I operate as a player-coach and lead with predictive talent mapping: mapping the people you will need 6 to 18 months before the req opens, hands on the work, while coaching founders, executives and hiring managers to act on the signals first.

The thesis

Hire ahead of the buildout, not behind it.

A note for executives

Month-end data is a rear-view mirror.

Most leadership teams still steer on numbers that arrive late: month-end labour reports, quarterly surveys and costly datasets refreshed on someone else’s schedule. By the time a shift shows up there, the round has closed, the executive has moved and your competitor has already hired.

Lagging indicators

Monthly jobs reports, published weeks after the month closes
Job postings: the receipt, filed after the decision was made
Expensive datasets refreshed monthly or quarterly

Live signals

Funding rounds, acquisitions and contracts, tracked as they’re filed
Executive moves and open seats, the week they happen
Read for what they mean for your talent and growth plan, not just logged

Think of me as a live business news desk for your company.

Intelligence on the moves that shape your market, tracked as they’re announced and filed, and turned into what to do next.

Disclaimer: signals are drawn from public filings and announcements and tracked as they’re published. They show direction, not certainty, and are meant to inform your decisions, not replace them. Nothing here is investment advice.

Why it matters now

The talent war is real, and lean teams can't afford to hire reactively

AI and energy are now competing for the same finite workforce: power and electrical engineers, data-centre builders, commissioning leads, skilled trades. The competition is fierce.

Primacy matters, and time kills all deals.

You can't afford for your projects to fall behind, and that starts with how quickly you can recruit your talent and get to it first, before the rest of the market finds out.

Systems-level thinking will be rewarded in the future of AI.

The winners won't be the companies with the most tools. They'll be the ones who connect capital, projects and people into one operating system.

Lean organizations win this by removing waste from hiring

Signal before the req

Forecast talent demand from market signals, not backfills, and build pipeline 6–18 months ahead.

Explicit tradeoffs

Make the choices between speed, quality and cost visible, so leaders decide on purpose.

Three qualified candidates per role, not ten

Precise talent mapping means less screening waste and faster decisions.

Know your competition

Competitor talent intelligence shows who else is hiring your people, and how fast you need to move.

Built on Claude

I'm a heavy Claude user: my talent-intelligence workflow runs on Claude, turning SEC filing, funding and executive-move signals into decision-ready talent market briefs.

Why me

A talent leader who thinks like an operator, sells like a growth exec, and builds with AI.

Systems-based thinking. 12+ years in technical recruitment, founder-operator and former Chief Growth Officer. I apply Lean principles across departments, removing waste from hiring and making the tradeoffs between speed, quality and cost explicit.

45→80+

Employees scaled at LiveSwitch on a TA operating system built from zero

33%

Faster time-to-fill at LiveSwitch by coaching hiring managers and removing bottlenecks

95%

Of LiveSwitch hires retained past six months

100%

Offer acceptance and 3:1 submittal-to-hire across 30+ SAP consulting hires at Illumiti

10x

Demo volume in 60 days as Chief Growth Officer, with a 32% demo-to-close rate

10+

Talent market briefs and competitor talent maps delivered to energy, AI and fintech executives in 2026

Built from zero, at speed

At LiveSwitch I built the TA operating system from zero: SOPs, KPIs, recruitment dashboards and onboarding, scaling the company from 45 to 80+ employees.
I founded Savant and grew it from a technology recruitment agency into a fractional Talent, GTM, Operations and Agentic AI practice, embedding as an outcome-owning senior operator across 10 client businesses.
I move at the speed of the business: three engineering roles (full-stack, front-end and back-end) filled for one client in a single weekend.
As Chief Growth Officer of a B2B signal and market intelligence platform, I turned funding events, SEC 8-K filings and executive transitions into decision-ready signals.

Recognition

Top Recruiter 2020
Top Female Founder 2023–24
Top Staffing Leader to Watch 2024
Featured in The Globe and Mail and CTV

Systems thinking · Player-coach

The future of AI rewards systems-based thinkers.

As AI takes on more of the execution, the advantage moves to people who can see the whole machine: how hiring, operations, finance and growth connect, where the waste is, and which trade-off to make. Gartner's 2026 AI research describes the shift from building AI to accounting for what it does and what it costs. That's a systems problem, and executives will reward the operators who can design the system, not just run one part of it.

Systems-based thinker

I map how talent, operations and growth affect each other, apply Lean principles to remove waste from hiring, and make the trade-offs between speed, quality and cost explicit before anyone commits budget.

Predictive talent mapping

I use capital, executive and hiring signals to map the people you'll need 6 to 18 months before the req opens, so you know what you're up against and build pipeline ahead of the market.

Player-coach

I lead from the field: sourcing, mapping and building the AI workflows myself, while coaching founders, executives and hiring managers to make faster, better talent decisions.

All in on agentic AI

I don’t just talk about agentic AI. I run on it.

My own operating system is agentic: AI workflows that track capital, executive and hiring signals, draft talent market briefs and map competitor talent, with my judgement on every call. I bring the same systems thinking to your talent, operations and growth engine: lean, measurable and built to scale.