The Talent Behind The Talent Project

When Katrina Ungar’s role in talent acquisition was unexpectedly eliminated at the end of 2024, she saw it not as an ending, but as an opportunity to build something of her own. After three years building out the company’s entire recruiting infrastructure from scratch, she knew her work had made an impact. The response from her colleagues when she shared the news said it all:

“How are we going to do this without you?”

It stuck with her. She hadn’t just delivered results—she’d built real relationships. She’d proven her value in a high-stakes, high-pressure environment, and the impact she’d made was obvious. That was the first nudge.

The second came from another recruiter who told her, “When this happened to me, I launched my own firm—and never looked back.”

That moment didn’t mark a setback - it sparked the beginning of The Talent Project.   

She launched The Talent Project in February 2025. And like most first-time founders, she thought she knew what would happen next.

“I thought I’d post on LinkedIn, and the floodgates would open,” Katrina says. “But that’s not what happened at all.”

But she didn’t give up. She doubled down on personal and professional development. Read Atomic Habits. Focused on building systems. Reached out to her network. Pitched. Pitched again. And slowly, things began to shift. 

Today, The Talent Project is up and running—with a few active clients and a growing pipeline. Katrina’s focus is clear: she recruits for beauty, wellness, and CPG companies, specializing in marketing, creative, and supply chain roles.

It’s the lane she knows best, and she’s not trying to be everything to everyone.

“I've been recruiting for these functions my entire career,” she says. “So I’m focusing on the areas where I can add the most value and make the greatest impact.”

Her career path wasn’t linear—but it gave her the exact mix of experience she needed. She started in retail, managing an Express store and doing all the hiring and training herself. That’s when the lightbulb went off: I actually like this part. So she moved into agency recruiting, where she learned how to build relationships and match candidates to roles—not just fill reqs.

She made her way into corporate recruiting with roles at Aeropostale, Kate Spade, and eventually beauty brands like Shiseido and Orveon. Each move taught her something different: how to work in chaos, how to manage volume, how to build from zero.

At Orveon, she didn’t just place talent—she built the talent function from scratch after a private equity acquisition. New systems. New team. New processes. She had complete autonomy and made it work. Until leadership changed and everything reset.

Now, with The Talent Project, she’s doing it again. Only this time, it’s on her terms.

She still has big goals—but the reasons behind them have shifted.

“What keeps me going now is that feeling when things click,” she says. “That dopamine hit when you sign a client, send your first batch of candidates—it’s euphoric.”

But even more than that, it’s the flexibility she’s built for herself and her family. “This business gives me more control. More space to show up for my family.”

She’s not trying to scale fast. She’s trying to build something sustainable—something grounded in the same values that made people want to work with her in the first place.

A good recruiter. A great teammate. And a decent human being.

That’s the combination she’s betting on. And it’s starting to pay off.

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