UNLEASH Startup Award

11:30-11:35 AM, Welcome and Introduction with Jess Von Bank and Jason Averbrook  

11:35-11:43 AM, Jeet Mukerji, CEO and Co-Founder of Kinfolk

HR teams lose 40% of their time to manual admin, while 53% of employees avoid the help desk—creating shadow work and delays. 

Meet Kin, your AI HR Assistant that resolves 70% of employee requests in Slack, Teams, and SMS—before they become tickets. 

Unlike chatbots, Kin understands company and employee context, handles complex queries like updating records and managing approvals, routes nuanced requests to the right person when needed, and creates tickets for the remaining requests in systems like JIRA, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. 

Kin also sends targeted communications—like policy updates, new programs, and company changes—and lets employees engage instantly. 

Fewer tickets. Faster responses. Better experiences. No extra headcount. 

11:43-11:51 AM, Jess Woodward- Jones, Co-Founder of Vizzy  

We think the resume is boring. Really, really, boring. Not only that, it’s not fit for purpose in 2025. It masks great talent and removes great talent, leaving candidates feeling helpless and businesses frustrated. 

Launched in 2023, and already used by the likes of Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, PizzaExpress, Virgin, Burberry, and WHSmith, we’re helping early career talent express who they truly are so businesses can hire for what really matters. 

Vizzy helps businesses:Identify their most engaged candidates from large volumes. Boost candidate experiences. Build quality over quantity talent pools. See and hire extraordinary people who otherwise would have been missed. 

11:51-11:59 AM, David Nason, CEO and Founder of HireBrain 

HireBrain is a pioneering hiring enablement platform that empowers talent acquisition teams and hiring managers to deliver exceptional hiring experiences—driving business success through improved hiring outcomes. The platform helps each stakeholder achieve more by providing the tools, training, integration, and automation needed to ensure scalable, predictable hiring outcomes. Celebrated by customers as a force multiplier, HireBrain customers leverage our Context-Aware AI to amplify human effort, automate labor-intensive tasks, and align execution with broader organizational talent and business strategies. With a strong focus on supporting global enterprises, HireBrain has become a trusted partner in the digital transformation of talent acquisition. 

11:59-12:07 PM, Darryl Jackson, Co-Founder of Handover  

Handover is an AI-powered platform that turns critical HR workflows — like onboarding, offboarding, exit interviews, and performance reviews — into structured, repeatable transitions. Contributors are guided through smart, role-specific prompts to share what matters, then explain it in their own words via async video. The platform transforms that input into a clean, searchable, execution-ready handover — 15x faster than typing and far more human than a static doc. 

Used by HR, Ops, and Project teams, Handover helps protect momentum, reduce risk, and make change easier. Backed by leading investors, it’s redefining how organizations capture and transfer knowledge at scale. 

12:07-12:15 PM, Stu Vaeth, Senior Vice President of Strategic Business Development of Trua 

Trua is defining the future of digital identity and trust screening with an industry-first, reusable, verified digital identity solution. Its patented, privacy-first technology delivers frictionless, all-in-one ID proofing and background screening—empowering businesses to verify and onboard candidates without directly soliciting personal information. 

12:15-12:25 PM: Q & A Session with the Finalists  

12:25-12:30 PM: Award Presentation with Marc Coleman, CEO of UNLEASH