Audra joined Madrona in 2022 to work with founders and early founding teams on all things recruiting. Because a high percentage of company-building success hinges on the ability to recruit the right leaders, the earlier in the journey founders learn and build solid talent practices, the better. Audra also works to ensure leaders contemplating a startup career will think of the Madrona ecosystem first. To make this a reality, she amplifies the talent brands and opportunities across the portfolio and supports the efforts of the team’s Hooked newsletter to elevate Madrona as a leader in the tech ecosystem.

Journey to Madrona

Audra has spent over two decades working as an operator in tech, successfully building the earliest stages of recruiting infrastructure through high-growth scale. Audra loves building from scratch, making her a great partner to founders on their first startup ride. She’s lived several early building journeys as the first talent leader, successfully scaling down to scale back up through company growth that led to three acquisitions. These experiences give her a unique lens into the complexity and challenges teams navigate as they build from scratch. Audra’s most recent building journeys with Heptio (acquired by VMware in 2018) and Polly landed her in the Madrona portfolio, opening the door for her to scale her experiences one-to-many.

Lessons learned

Hiring the right team is 100% the biggest challenge in building a company. As a founder, it’s easy to get distracted by 100 other to-dos at a startup, but the only way a founder and their business can scale is by hiring the right people to attack the next big milestone. Founder focus here is critical. Resist the urge to make recruiting someone else’s job.

When she’s not in the office…

Audra is a lifelong adventurer who loves exploring new places without an itinerary with her equally adventurous partner (and grown-up kids when they have time for it!)

Noteworthy

Audra received a full-ride basketball scholarship to Big Bend Community College, where she earned her associate degree. She has also been an ongoing advocate for diversity in tech and represented all women as a panelist at AnitaB.Org.