Every AQ Recruiting engagement is led directly by experienced talent partners who stay close to your business, your candidates, and every decision from search strategy through final hire.
MEET THE TEAM
Two partners.
One shared standard.
Mike Materasso
CEO & TALENT PARTNER
EXECUTIVE SEARCH • GTM LEADERSHIP • STRATEGIC TALENT
Mike Materasso is the Founder and CEO of AQ Recruiting, where he partners with private equity-backed, venture-backed, and high-growth companies to identify and recruit the leaders who drive growth.
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With more than 15 years of experience across executive search and in-house talent leadership, Mike has built teams and recruited senior leaders at some of the world's most innovative companies, including Slack, Brex, Alpine Investors, Amazon and Deloitte. His experience spans all non-technical executive recruiting, and specializes in go-to-market leadership, sales, customer success, professional services, and other critical commercial functions.
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He works closely with founders, CEOs, investors, and hiring leaders to understand the business challenge behind the hire, define what success looks like, and identify leaders with the experience, judgement, and leadership qualities to deliver against it. He has built recruiting functions from the ground up, partnered directly with executives through periods of rapid growth and organizational change, and developed a deep understanding of what separates candidates who look impressive on paper from leaders who can actually build, scale, and deliver.
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As CEO and Talent Partner, Mike remains personally involved in every search - from defining the profile and developing the market strategy to assessing candidates, managing the process, and ultimately helping clients land the right leader.
COO & TALENT PARTNER
Gina Jacobson
EXECUTIVE SEARCH • GO-TO-MARKET LEADERSHIP • SEARCH OPERATIONS
Gina brings 15 years of experience in go-to-market leadership across customer success, sales, operations, and Chief of Staff roles. Her career spans SaaS businesses, hypergrowth companies, and agencies, giving her firsthand insight into how commercial organizations evolve - and the leadership required at each stage of growth.Â
Gina spent eight years as a foundational customer success leader at Slack, where she helped build the company's East Coast and international organizations. As Slack scaled, she hired dozens of people into the business and developed a deep understanding of how to identify candidates who can thrive in fast-moving, high-expectation environments.
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Having spent much of her career building high-performing teams and partnering closely with senior leaders, Gina approaches executive search with the perspective of an experienced hiring manager. She looks beyond credentials to assess what a business truly needs, how a candidate will operate within its environment, and whether that person can turn the company's priorities into meaningful results.
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As COO and Talent Partner at AQ Recruiting, Gina combines disciplined search execution with a highly personal approach to client relationships. She brings clarity, efficiency, and genuine partnership to every engagement while remaining closely involved with both clients and candidates throughout the process.
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We believe the strongest search partnerships are built on candor, curiosity, and a shared commitment to getting the leadership decision right.
MIKE MATERASSO & GINA JACOBSON • AQ RECRUITING