Gina Quinlan San Francisco

Who they are

Gina Quinlan is a recruiter focused on progressive tech startups in San Francisco — a former NCAA regional balance beam champion who paints abstract acrylics at her studio, madeinsausalito.art.

Person

Gina studied at Marymount University and built her career in tech recruiting across a succession of San Francisco Bay Area companies. She started as a Recruiting Coordinator at Razorfish — digital agency, fast-moving — then stepped up to Director of Recruiting at PlayHaven, the mobile gaming monetization platform. From there she moved into a series of contract roles: Actian Corporation, Datameer, and Talend, all data-infrastructure companies that were scaling through the 2010s. The through-line is specialist depth in technical and data-adjacent hiring, cycling through companies at growth stages before they matured. She posts occasionally on LinkedIn on talent acquisition, AI in recruiting, and relocation packages as a tool for attracting talent. Outside of work, she paints abstract acrylics — hills, houseboats, and the Bay — and was mentored in art by ceramicist Edith Heath in the late 1990s; she keeps a site at madeinsausalito.art. Possibly — the mix of short contract stints and a director-level role earlier suggests she's comfortable operating independently and self-directing her workload.

How they likely show up

  • Specialist role pattern (recruiter across multiple companies, not an HR generalist) → goes deep on a single function rather than spreading across disciplines.
  • Series of contract engagements at Actian, Datameer, and Talend → comfortable with ambiguity, likely self-directed and able to ramp quickly in new environments.
  • Director of Recruiting title at PlayHaven earlier in career, then contract roles → may prefer ownership and autonomy over hierarchy.
  • LinkedIn posts on AI in recruiting and relocation packages → engaged with tactical, process-level improvement, not just headcount filling.
  • Possibly — mixed tenure shape across roles suggests she selects engagements for fit or project scope rather than defaulting to long-term stability.

Conversation tips

  • → Ask about her contracting model — she's worked across data-infrastructure companies like Datameer and Talend, and she likely has a clear view on when to embed vs. stay independent.
  • → The AI-in-recruiting angle is a genuine interest, not a buzzword — come with a specific point of view, not a generic pitch about automation.
  • → Mention the relocation package topic if relevant — she's written about it as a talent-attraction lever and will have concrete opinions.
  • → Reference madeinsausalito.art if it's come up naturally — it's her own project and a real part of her identity, not a footnote.

Toolbox

Openers

  • Open on the data-infrastructure recruiting arc — Actian, Datameer, and Talend are a very specific cluster of companies; ask what drew her to that corner of the market and what she learned about hiring technical talent there.
  • Reference madeinsausalito.art — she built a site for her abstract painting practice and was mentored by Edith Heath in the late 1990s; it's an unusual combination with a recruiting career and she'll have something to say about it.
  • Lead with relocation packages as a talent-attraction tool — it's one of the topics she posts about, and it's a concrete, debatable subject that opens a real conversation about how startups compete for candidates.

Discovery questions

  1. You've recruited across Actian, Datameer, and Talend — what's the difference in hiring profiles between a company selling to data engineers versus one selling to the business side?
  2. You write about AI in recruiting — where have you actually seen it change your workflow, and where does it still fall flat?
  3. Going from Director of Recruiting at PlayHaven to a run of contract roles — what drove that shift, and what does the contract model let you do that a staff role doesn't?

Avoid

Don't pitch generic recruiting software or treat the conversation as a vendor call — she's a specialist practitioner with opinions on process, and she'll disengage fast if the conversation stays at the feature-list level.

Make it yours

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Sources

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Generated by briefthecall.com from public web sources on June 30, 2026. Each claim is linked to its source above.

Automatically generated by AI from public sources. May be inaccurate or out of date. Remove or correct this profile →