Work directly with the best in talent acquisition.
Diana Willson Bell has spent a decade building teams for Canva, Vista Equity Partners and CoStar Group. Now she runs every search herself, across sales, go-to-market, leadership and technical roles, from the first conversation to the signed offer.
Based in Austin, Texas. Searches across the United States and internationally.
What working directly with Diana means.
Diana has spent a decade building teams for Canva, Vista Equity Partners and CoStar Group, and placing executives for growth companies in retained search. Her clients get that experience on every call.
There is no account manager between you and the recruiter, and no hand-off once the search is signed. The person you meet on day one is the person who delivers the hire.
The brief is a conversation with Diana.
She learns the role, the team and the business before anyone is approached, and writes the specification you will both hire against.
Every candidate you meet, she has already met.
Diana sources, screens and interviews personally, so the shortlist carries her judgement and a written view on each person.
The offer is negotiated by the person who knows both sides.
Compensation, references, counter-offers and the first ninety days are handled by the same person who took the brief.
Four practices, one standard.
Most recruiters specialise in one function. Diana has hired across all four for a decade, in-house and in search. That matters when a role sits between functions, which the important ones usually do.
Sales
Account executives through chief revenue officers. Enterprise, mid-market and SMB; account management, business development and sales leadership.
Go-to-market
Marketing, customer success, revenue operations, partnerships, solutions engineering and the leaders who run them.
Leadership and strategy
C-suite, vice president and general manager roles, chiefs of staff, strategy and operations, finance and people leaders.
Technical
Engineering, product, data and design, from senior individual contributors to heads of function.
Ten years of hiring, on both sides of the table.
Retained search, in-house talent acquisition and private equity portfolio work, across software, AI, financial services, real estate and publishing. Diana knows what a great hire looks like from the inside of the company as well as from the search.
- 87+
- portfolio companies advised on hiring and inclusion at Vista Equity Partners
- 90,000
- employees reached by that work, worldwide
- 60%
- growth in Vista Consulting Group headcount, 125 to 200, in the year Diana built its recruiting function
- 200%
- of hiring goal in a single quarter at CoStar Group, with a five-star candidate experience average
- 2026 to present
Canva, Talent Acquisition and People Partner
Scaling go-to-market and leadership teams for one of the world's most-used design platforms.
- 2024 to 2026
CoStar Group, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner
Sales, marketing and product hiring across US markets. Selected for the inaugural Talent Acquisition VP Advisory Council. Coached three recruiting partners.
- 2022 to 2024
Independent consultant, Talent and people strategy
Clients with more than $100M in combined annual revenue: venture-backed AI startups, healthcare, real estate, renewable energy, engineering, manufacturing and global technology.
- 2018 to 2022
Vista Equity Partners, Corporate Recruiter, then Diversity and Inclusion Specialist
Built and scaled Vista Consulting Group's recruiting function across every department, from interns to senior leadership, and hired internationally in India, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Then advised 87 portfolio companies on inclusive hiring and wrote the firm's DEI policy.
- 2015 to 2018
HireBetter, Executive Recruiter
Retained executive and management search for growth-stage and middle-market companies, across finance, operations, product, sales, marketing and engineering.
- 2014 to 2015
Hearst Magazines, Human Resources Associate
Full-cycle recruiting for sales, marketing and operations roles across 21 titles and Hearst Digital Media.
- 2012 to 2014
PrincetonOne, Recruiting Specialist, Accounting and Finance
Search for finance roles and the build-out of the Austin contract staffing practice.
Barnard College, Columbia University, Bachelor of Arts. Cornell University ILR School, Graduate Certificate in Advanced Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. SHRM Foundation Veterans at Work certificate. Advanced Spanish.
How a search runs.
- 1
Brief
A working session on the role, the team and what has gone wrong before. Diana writes the specification you will both hire against, and tells you if the role as described will not get hired.
- 2
Map
The market is mapped before anyone is approached: who holds this role at comparable companies, who is ready to move, and who is not but should hear about it anyway.
- 3
Shortlist
Diana meets every candidate herself. You see a short list with a written view on each person, not a stack of résumés, and you only interview people who have already said yes to the role on paper.
- 4
Close and land
Offer design, references, counter-offer handling and the first ninety days. The search ends when the hire is settled, not when they sign.
Start a search.
Tell Diana about the role, or about the problem the role is meant to solve. She replies to every message herself, usually within a working day.
If you are a candidate thinking about what comes next, write too. Diana reads those messages herself as well.