Who We Are
Who We Are
Our Multi-Disciplinary Approach
The Wildfire Group is a specialized advisory practice focused on AI hiring systems risk, compliance, and operational maturity. We are a woman and minority founded firm, and we prize diverse perspectives and experiences.
Our team includes:
Legal & Compliance
Employment counsel with expertise in algorithmic discrimination, EEOC enforcement, and vendor liability frameworks
Technical & Security
Cybersecurity engineers who audit AI systems architecture, data handling, API security, and model transparency
Talent Acquisition Strategy & HR Operations
TA/HR process and compliance experts who have built and scaled hiring systems at Fortune 500 companies and hypergrowth startups
Contingent Workforce Strategy
Advisors specializing in contractor classification, workforce planning, and compliance in blended talent models
Human Systems & Organizational Psychology
Practitioners trained in decision science, behavioral economics, and the human factors that determine whether AI integration succeeds or fails
AI hiring systems create risk at the intersection of:
-Legal exposure (discrimination, disparate impact, vendor liability)
-Technical vulnerability (data security, model bias, system failures)
-Operational breakdown (process gaps, authority confusion, quality collapse)
-Workforce complexity (FTE vs. contingent, global compliance, classification risk)
Most firms send one consultant. We send the team that can see the whole system.
Meet Our Advisory Team
Keri Tietjen Smith
Executive Director, TA Infrastructure
Keri Tietjen Smith works at the intersection of organizational psychology, hiring infrastructure, and AI-enabled decision workflows. She brings over 20 years of experience building and scaling talent systems across high-growth tech, enterprise environments, and regulated public-sector settings, advising organizations from seed-stage through Fortune 50, including helping scale NetSuite 1150% in a four year period during hypergrowth.
Keri got her start in boutique agency recruitment and commercial banking, which shaped her practical, outcomes-first approach to talent strategy, risk, and operational decision-making.
As the Executive Director of TA Infrastructure, she leads structured, functional assessments that help teams surface operational, legal-adjacent, and reputational risk introduced by automation, data practices, and unclear decision ownership. She’s known for translating complex hiring ecosystems, ATS configurations, and AI-assisted workflows into defensible operating models leaders can explain, govern, and stand behind.
Her background includes enterprise talent advisory at Oracle, global talent operations and analytics leadership at NetSuite, and earlier roles supporting high-accountability workforce operations with the U.S. Department of Commerce and within the U.S. Department of Defense.
She’s a member of Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute, American Psychological Association and was recently recognized as an Influential Woman in 2025. Most recently, she has formed an International Human Systems and AI Accountability Council, starting it’s inaugural Spring Cohort in 2026.
Keri holds a B.S. in Psychology, certifications in AI Governance from Oxford University, Human Design from ASU, Brand Management from Cornell University, and will begin an M.S. in AI Management and Policy at Purdue University in Summer 2026.
Valerie McClellan
Contingent Workforce Compliance
Valerie McClellan is a trusted advisor to enterprise organizations navigating complex contingent workforce risk. With over 15 years of experience supporting Fortune 500 companies, she designs and optimizes compliant, scalable workforce programs that align with executive priorities and regulatory demands.
Valerie specializes in contractor classification (W2, 1099, and global engagements), supplier governance, MSP/VMS strategy, and enterprise workforce risk mitigation. She partners directly with C-suite leaders and cross-functional stakeholders across Procurement, Legal, HR, and Finance to design programs that are audit-ready, operationally efficient, and built for long-term sustainability.
Throughout her career, Valerie has led and designed multi-site and global workforce programs for organizations including Autodesk, CBS Interactive, Zynga, and CSAA Insurance Group. She has successfully stabilized high-risk programs, implemented governance frameworks, developed supplier performance scorecards, and delivered data-driven executive insights that transform workforce complexity into strategic advantage.
Known for her hands-on leadership and pragmatic approach, Valerie builds programs that not only meet compliance standards but enhance workforce visibility, cost control, and operational resilience.
Valerie holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh and completed formal Project Management training through UCLA Extension, and resides in the SF Bay Area, CA.
At Wildfire Group Risk Advisory, she designs enterprise-grade contingent workforce programs that reduce risk, strengthen governance, and enable organizations to scale with confidence.
Raphael Gil brings the legal and governance lens that rounds out Wildfire’s pod, especially where hiring technology, privacy, contracts, and operational risk start to overlap.
He’s a business attorney and founder of Gil Esq PLLC, with a background in litigation, investigations, and regulatory risk, and a practice built around practical, tech-forward legal counsel for modern organizations. His work spans commercial agreements, SaaS and licensing, vendor and customer contracts, corporate governance, fundraising support, and risk-sensitive business decisions, which makes him a strong fit for Wildfire’s legal lane when clients need more than generic compliance language.
In Wildfire’s scope, Raphael’s contribution is legal defensibility and governance architecture: he helps translate technical and operational findings into enforceable policy, contract protections, vendor terms, and decision frameworks leadership can actually use.
He’s especially valuable in situations involving AI-related procurement, data handling, privacy obligations, and internal accountability, because he can connect legal risk to real workflow design instead of treating it as a separate silo. He also advises on privacy and data protection requirements including GDPR and CCPA, and works across private companies and nonprofits on governance modernization and regulatory alignment.
Raphael holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a B.S. from St. John’s University, and he is admitted in both New York and Washington. His current practice is based in Seattle and serves clients in both Washington and New York, which adds useful cross-jurisdiction perspective for Wildfire’s clients operating across multiple regions.
Raphael Gil, J.D.
Senior Advisor, Legal Defensibility & Governance
Damien McCall, MBA
Senior Advisor, Cyber Risk & Controls
Damien McCall, MBA, brings Wildfire a strong cyber risk and controls backbone, especially where AI hiring tools, vendor security, and enterprise governance intersect. He has 15+ years of experience across cybersecurity, GRC, IAM, incident response, application security, and third-party risk, with a track record of translating technical risk into executive-ready decisions, which is exactly what Wildfire clients need when hiring systems are under legal, audit, and board scrutiny.
His background includes risk and security leadership work with Huntington National Bank, Allianz, and Wells Fargo, where he led enterprise risk reporting, IAM control hardening, secure code review programs, and operational risk governance.
He’s worked directly in the lanes that matter most to Wildfire’s clients: Archer/ADO dashboarding, CSIRT reporting to executives, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 alignment, vendor and secure code review oversight, and cross-functional coordination with legal, compliance, and GRC teams. That makes him especially valuable in evaluating whether a hiring technology stack is not just compliant on paper, but actually secure, monitored, and defensible in practice.
In Wildfire’s pod model, Damien’s lane is cyber and control assurance: data protection, access governance, monitoring, incident readiness, and vendor risk discipline. He helps clients identify where exposure actually lives, tighten controls before issues escalate, and document a cleaner risk posture across systems and workflows.
He also brings formal business and technology training, with an MBA in Technology Management (Keller Graduate School of Management), a bachelor’s degree in Business Management (University of Phoenix), an associate degree in Network Technology (Heald College), plus ITIL v3, CompTIA Security+, and CompTIA A+ certifications.
Denisse Sealy
Recruiting Programs and HR Ops
Denisse Sealy is a seasoned talent acquisition leader with over 20 years of recruiting experience, beginning her career in HR and Agency recruiting where she developed a strong foundation in full-cycle talent delivery, client partnership, and high-volume sourcing across competitive markets. This early experience shaped her ability to move with urgency, understand business needs quickly, and match the right talent to the right environments.
She most recently holds a talent acquisition advisory role specializing in Early-Career and Technical Recruiting within the cloud and data center infrastructure space. She previously served as a Senior Sourcing Recruiter, Early Career at Oracle, where she focused on identifying and developing emerging talent to support large-scale cloud and AI infrastructure initiatives. Previously, she held TA Operational roles at NetSuite.
She has actively supported hiring initiatives tied to major infrastructure projects, including recruitment for data center technician roles supporting advanced AI workloads and large-scale cloud campuses.
Known for her relationship-driven approach, Denisse emphasizes thoughtful, personalized recruiting and operational practices and believes successful hiring is built on mutual respect between recruiters and candidates. She frequently shares insights on improving candidate engagement, encouraging intentional outreach and professional communication throughout the hiring process.
She holds a BS from Columbus State University, further grounding her background in Business and Applied Studies that support her people-focused, performance-driven recruiting, HR and Operations strategy. She is also an Entrepreneur in the Events Industry in Atlanta, GA.
Phil Nadeau
Senior Advisor, Technical Assurance & AI Systems Engineer
Phil Nadeau brings deep technical assurance to Wildfire’s pod, with a rare mix of AI/ML, search, cloud infrastructure, application security, and CI/CD engineering experience. He’s the kind of engineer who can look past vendor marketing and assess what a hiring system is actually doing, how it’s built, where it can fail, and whether the technical claims will hold up under audit, legal review, or operational stress. His background is especially strong in machine learning-enabled detection, search/retrieval systems, test automation, and production-grade engineering across complex enterprise environments.
His prior experience includes engineering roles supporting Apple (via Bayside Solutions), Peraton Labs, Microsoft (Azure Storage), ServiceNow (AI Search), and Salesforce, where he was a founding member of the Security Analytics team and helped build Salesforce’s first machine-learning-driven malware detector, work that contributed to a U.S. patent.
He also led technical integration and validation work across cloud, detection, and AI-enhanced search environments, including algorithmic quality measurement, cloud traffic control, and secure event pipeline architecture. That’s directly relevant to Wildfire’s work, because it means Phil can evaluate model behavior, proxy risks, testability, monitoring, and implementation integrity, not just policy language.
In Wildfire’s scope, Phil’s lane is technical validation and engineering risk review: model logic, architecture, drift controls, explainability claims, system instrumentation, and whether a vendor’s product is actually production-ready and defensible. He also brings strong communication and mentoring capability, which makes him effective in a cross-functional pod where technical findings need to be translated into legal, operational, and compliance action.
Phil holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Western Washington University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and he also holds AWS Cloud Practitioner and AWS AI Practitioner certifications, with CISSP in progress.
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