Keri Tietjen Smith on Brainfood Live | Talent Strategy, AI Hiring Systems & Decision Governance

Keri Tietjen Smith uses Organizational I/O psychology and years of Talent Acquisition Recruitment and Operations experience from Startups to Fortune 50 companies, to advise clients on AI Policy, Governance and accountability in AI-influenced hiring and workforce decision systems. Her background includes a BS in Psychology, certifications in Human Design and AI Governance from ASU and Oxford University, and currently attending Purdue University to pursue her MS in AI Management and Policy.

She is a Executive Director, Talent Systems Infrastructure at Wildfire Group AI Hiring Risk Advisory & Talent Strategy, where she advises organizations and policymakers on hiring systems risk, compliance, and the downstream labor impacts of automation. Her work examines workers’ rights, litigation as a driver of AI governance, and the policy gaps emerging as employment decisions become increasingly automated.

Wildfire Group Talent Design and AI Risk Advisory

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On Brainfood Live with Hung Lee, she explains how talent strategy fails when disconnected from decision governance and why Machine Intelligence reshapes hiring, pay and workforce design at the system level.

Keri Tietjen Smith, Founder and Principal of Wildfire Group, joined Brainfood Live with Hung Lee to talk about why most companies think they have a hiring problem when they actually have a decision problem.

I was invited because my work focuses on how Machine Intelligence reshapes hiring, compensation, and workforce design at the system level, not just at the tooling or execution layer.

Key perspectives I shared in the conversation:

• Why talent strategy fails when it’s disconnected from decision governance and accountability

• How Machine Intelligence shifts where human judgment is required, not whether humans matter

• The hidden risk of compensation misalignment in automated hiring and performance systems

• Why “hiring faster” is often a signal of upstream strategy failure

• How organizations can reduce risk by designing for decision quality, not volume

This conversation sits at the intersection of talent, technology, and power, and it reflects the work I do with leaders who are trying to operate responsibly in an environment of constraint, automation, and permanent change.

If you’re rethinking how hiring, pay, and decision-making actually work inside modern organizations, this one’s worth your time.