Camille Fetter

Camille Fetter is founder and CEO of Talentfoot, the Chicago executive search firm she started in 2010 to place marketing, sales, technology, and operations leaders at high-growth digital companies. She came up through media planning and digital recruiting, then built a firm around the idea that the right role can change someone's life.

Crisis-line roots in Boulder

At the University of Colorado Boulder she earned a B.S. in advertising with a minor in technology, art, and media, and volunteered on a Denver-area crisis hotline covering domestic violence, suicide prevention, and gender and sexual identity support. In an Authority Magazine interview she called that work one of her most formative experiences: it taught her to connect with people from empathy, respect, and kindness. She has said she would not have predicted a career in executive search from that volunteer shift, but looking back she treats search as the same mission - helping people find work that makes their lives better.

From media planning to founding Talentfoot

Raised in Lake Forest, Illinois, she started in media planning at Kelly Scott Madison as digital advertising took off. In a JWC Media / Sheridan Road profile she recalled, "I had the opportunity to learn and understand this new form of media consumption that was quickly changing life as we knew it," and that her passion for digital marketing became a passion for digital business. She moved into staffing and then executive search, including leading Midwest digital marketing and media recruiting at Lucas Group, and served as vice president of corporate relations on the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association executive board. Working with investors and high-growth digital startups gave her the confidence to start her own firm at 28. She launched Talentfoot in 2010.

Indigo and staying ahead of the workforce

Talentfoot fields a national team - about 50 associates in that JWC profile - matching marketing, sales, technology, HR, and operations talent with Series B startups through Fortune 50 brands and PE- and VC-backed companies. "At Talentfoot," she told JWC, "we define our success by our ability to change lives for the better - for the employers who trust us to hire the right talent to grow their businesses, and for the job seekers who depend on our ability to match their talents and desires with the right position, culture, and leadership team." On workforce pace she said, "The workforce continues to change at an unprecedented pace. Our job is to not only keep up with this pace but to stay ahead of it." That push produced Indigo, an invite-only C-suite membership network that combines matchmaking, executive search, board, and advisory services on one platform.

On teams, empathy, and fulfillment

Early on she tried to run everything herself. In the Authority Magazine conversation she named the pivot plainly: a leader is only as good as the team, and she had to hire people smarter than her with diverse opinions and skillsets. She advises meeting people where they are in life - valuing impact over hours - and has argued in Great Resignation coverage that people do not leave companies so much as they leave leaders. Across her Forbes HR Council profile and Talentfoot materials, her stated mission is helping people find fulfillment through fulfilling work. She is a Forbes HR Council member, a founding member of Chief, and a YPO Chicagoland board member; Talentfoot is WBENC-certified as women-owned.