Our Team
Our team members have a cumulative average of 19 years’ experience recruiting technology professionals. There is no recruitment firm, large or small, that can match the depth and focus of the Corporate Recruiters team.
Founder, president, ceo
Don Safnuk
Don Safnuk founded Corporate Recruiters in 1980 with a model that was, at the time, unique – a recruiting business focused entirely on the technology sector. This depth of focus and history provides BC based small and mid cap technology clients with executive-level search services that merge North American wide reach with an in depth understanding of the local business environment.
Don’s work history includes being a CEO of a public electronic manufacturer and co-founder of a boutique investment banking firm. He has also served as a director on numerous public and private companies plus trade association and charitable not-for-profit boards. Over the years Don was involved with the merger of Software BC and the Electronic Manufacturers Association into what is now the British Columbia Technology Industries Association (BCTIA) and later served for 6 years on BCTIA’s board of directors. He also on served on the VIATeC (Victoria Innovation, Advanced Technology and Entrepreneurship Council) board for 6 years, and the Premier’s Technology Council for 8 years.
Executive Leadership, Sales, Marketing and Product Management
Darrell Bowman
Darrell has 20+ years of experience recruiting business development, sales, and marketing leadership roles. He is our internal decathlete who has valuable insights when it comes to building revenue across a wide range of technology and business areas.
With a BSc. from Waterloo and a passion for both electronics and machines, his expertise extends beyond recruitment and understands the entire product or solution lifecycle from initial concept, through to launching global sales.
Darrell’s career has taken him around the world and possesses a deep understanding of revenue generation in both North American and international markets. This broad perspective is invaluable when it comes to identifying the right skill sets needed to secure initial customers and beachhead customers versus those required to establish repeatable processes for scalable growth.
Reach out and ask about how successful sales and marketing teams evolve with growing revenues. It may change the way you look at who needs to join the team next.
Executive Leadership, Software & Engineering
Amanda Du Toit
Amanda has 20+ years of experience recruiting Engineering and Product Development Teams and Leadership. She has helped build some of the most successful start-up and scale-up teams focused on Software, Hardware and related engineering disciplines.
With a Master’s Degree in Psychology, Amanda has made the deep dive into building highly productive technology cultures. This starts at the top with putting in place the right-fit CTO aligned with the company's stage and size. Amanda has personally met and knows many of our Province's most influential technology leaders.
A kick-ass engineering culture is a must to attract and retain the best engineering talent – essential in high growth and stable situations, but especially in tough times, you need to ensure you don’t lose your key contributors.
Reach out and ask about building your engineering culture - it may change how you approach building your development team.
Executive Leadership, Board Directors, Finance, and Operations
Tim Swanson
Tim has 20+ years of experience in recruiting entrepreneurial technology leaders in software, hardware, biotechnology, and Sustainable Technology. Our clients are making the world a better place.
Tim leads our CXO, Operations, Finance and Board search engagements. With deep knowledge of how tech companies grow, he has his finger on how leadership evolves from seed stage to scale and exit.
With boundless curiosity and a passion for entrepreneurship, Tim led our research into the Entrepreneurial Persona Methodology for our search practice. Startup companies identify their unique Customer Persona to unlock growth and scale. We take the same approach and leverage our knowledge of behaviour sets to create a Candidate Persona. The resume is table stakes, and matching it with the right behaviour sets significantly increases the potential for success.
We did a deep dive analyzing our 20+ years of Tech Startup search, and we identified the six key behaviours of successful entrepreneurial leaders and how these behaviour sets need to evolve as companies grow from seed to scale. It truly is a relay race of both skills and behaviour sets.
Reach out and ask about the Entrepreneurial Persona; it may change how you look at leadership, especially from a Board Perspective.
Leadership and Engineering
Kim Brooks
Through over 25 years with Corporate Recruiters, Kim Brooks has grown up with BC’s technology innovators from the early days of electronic manufacturing to our cutting-edge BC-Tech 2.0. Innovation also runs in her personal life – for her own home, she has developed a sustainable and revolutionary green building material. She is a champion of our technology industry and sees the future in harnessing our ultimate renewable resource – the brainpower of BC’s tech entrepreneurs.
Having served on numerous industry Boards and won Awards for consulting excellence, Kim has helped to build some of BC’s best tech success stories by focusing on innovative technology leadership.
“We’ve developed a long term trusting relationship with them that has served both as a source of talent and a tremendous source of solid business advice.”