Kate Smalkin

Kate currently serves as the SVP of Partnerships for Climb Hire. Most recently, Kate served as Global Talent Lead for Public.com, a venture-backed high-growth retail investment startup based in New York. This is actually Kate’s second stint at Climb Hire - from 2019-2022 she built Climb Hire’s employer partnerships function from scratch, having built 60+ partnerships with companies like Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, Discord, IBM, Gusto, and more. Prior to Climb Hire, she was an Associate Partner with Arete Partners, a boutique SF-based executive search firm, where she ran VP+ level searches in Engineering, Product Marketing, Product Management, and more for Seed-Series A startups globally. Previously, Kate held leadership roles in sales & recruiting at Frederickson Partners in Menlo Park, where she oversaw business development, co-led the consulting & contracting practice, and ran C-level HR searches for marquee companies nationwide. Kate holds an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion from Yale University and a B.A. in French from the University of Redlands. She's thrilled to continue pushing the envelope on systems-level change with Climb Hire, helping companies think more broadly and creatively about entry-level hiring.