After graduating from Ball State University with a double major in organizational communication and political science, Evansville, Indiana-born and raised Amy Oviedo moved to Chicago on a whim to start her career in the same city where one of her sisters lived.

Oviedo_CIRCLEShe was working as a benefits administrator for a company called TruServ, the worldwide HQ for True Value hardware, when she asked a talent recruiter working next to her if she could help with some recruitment work in her free time. The recruiter said yes to the help and after that moment, Amy says, “I fell in love with hunting, sorting, and identifying talent.”

Once Amy realized she had found her calling, she knew she had to pursue it. She quickly moved to a startup IT staffing firm where she filled 300 positions in 6 months! “From there I was hooked for life on talent acquisition and the fast pace of technology organizations,” Amy said.

After eight years in Chicago, Amy decided to move back to Indy to be closer to friends and family. Even though she was back in Indy she was still working remotely for the Chicago-based company PSAV as the director of talent acquisition.

She worked remotely for another eight years at PSAV, but Amy explains that when she learned about an opportunity with cloud solutions integrator Kinney Group she decided it was time to join the Indianapolis working-world and leave her home-office setup behind.

Finding a home at Kinney Group

Almost three years later, Amy is now leading the talent charge for Kinney Group as vice president people operations, and she’s having the time of her life!

“The culture at Kinney Group is grounded in a bias to action, with full transparency into how everything and everyone impacts the mission of the business. Every day I experience the same entrepreneur mentality that first attracted me to technology organizations,” Amy said. “Except this time around with Kinney Group, we are celebrating our 10-year anniversary and are well beyond a start-up phase.”

The Kinney culture is a refreshing change to the cultures at the $1 billion+ organizations she worked at before that may have been progressive with technology, but outdated in processes and procedures.

“My first month at Kinney Group was a struggle to remind myself that I could build whatever I needed, within reason, and I did not need to run it by anyone”, said Amy. “If I have a value-added business idea in the morning, I can implement it that same day.”

Amy is incredibly proud of her work at Kinney and she’s excited to be sharing her passion and expertise in recruiting with her people operations team.

“Kinney Group has allowed me to leverage every experience I had in my 15+ year career,” Amy said. “I have had full support in building a progressive function that is focused on analytics, engagement, and talent communities. I am learning every day and am excited to see what we can do next.”

She knows how critical finding good talent is for companies and believes talent is the backbone of any business. “Bad hires are costly, both in dollars and opportunities. Conversely, good hires build your culture, your business, and are your organization’s future,” she explains.

“I always make the case for people and culture functions to have a seat at the executive table. Any company can make a great product or provide a useful service but no company can succeed without people who believe in the mission and have the values, passion, and requisite skills to move it forward.”

Amy is excited to be following her passion for finding talent to Indy, and helping to grow the tech ecosystem.

“I adore Chicago but Indy is home. Indianapolis is a city where anyone can fit in and be successful. In my 10 years here, I have seen the job market, compensation, cultural activities, and housing options expand exponentially.”

Amy’s favorite thing about the Indy tech community

“Energy. Plain and simple. When we are all playing as a cohesive team, even across organizations and competition, there is no limit to what we can accomplish for our businesses, our industry, and Indianapolis.”

TechPoint’s Tech 25

Learn more about TechPoint’s annual Tech 25 awards program that recognizes 25 individuals who are critical and exceptional performers helping to grow our community’s tech and tech-enabled companies, but who — not being the CEO or other top executives — don’t get celebrated publicly as often as they deserve.