Rita Tomlinson
In leading Tomlinson Search, Rita brings many years of executive search and professional work experience to her role.
Rita’s professional experiences began in finance in investment banking roles. First, she worked with Charter Financial, a boutique financial services firm in Atlanta, and then in the greater NYC area working for Citibank. Rita helped finance equipment leases for Boeing aircraft for major airlines including American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Japan Airlines, and Singapore Airlines, and for drilling equipment for the oil and gas industry.
After obtaining her MBA, she worked at Xerox Corporation in corporate finance. Proactively, she decided to become a search consultant.
After several highly successfully years as a search consultant at Cochran, Cochran and Yale in Rochester NY, Rita struck out on her own and recruited for more than a dozen years, leading Van Houten & Rogers.
Then, she held three staffing executive roles, leading highly productive Talent Acquisition teams:
Global Crossing & Level 3 Communications - Rita was the US and Canada staffing leader for Global Crossing, responsible for hiring for an employee base of 2,600 as part of a global talent team supporting 4,000 employees worldwide. She then transitioned, through acquisition by Level 3 Communications, to lead hiring for several key functional areas with an employee base of 11,000. Industry: one of world’s largest IP Data Network Providers offering cloud connectivity, hosting, and managed security services including network protection.
Welch Allyn – Rita assumed global staffing leadership for the company’s employee base of 2,500 in 26 countries. She hired key staff for a newly opened European HQ and Service Center in The Netherlands, ramped up JAPAC hiring in Singapore, strengthened corporate leadership in Canada, and increased global sales and marketing hires with an emphasis on the Middle East and India. Industry: medical device manufacturer of patient assessment products.
Syracuse University – As University staffing leader, Rita transformed a passive human resources function, focused on posting jobs, to a full-cycle, centralized, proactive talent acquisition operation, resulting in a faster, more efficient, and improved employment experience for the University employment base of 3,500 staff and 1,100 faculty. She sourced, hired and led a talent acquisition team to partner with hiring managers for the 13 schools and colleges and 6 admin units, collaborating with Deans and Administration leaders. She and her team created, standardized, and streamlined processes for job postings, advertising, sourcing, screening, interviewing, reference checking, offer letters, salary negotiations, relocation assistance, background checking, and on-boarding. As a result, Syracuse University has a significantly shortened and improved hiring process. SU is now one of only a handful of national universities utilizing a proactive, state-of-the-art, centralized talent acquisition team model.
With Tomlinson Search, Rita is delighted to blend her many rich experiences to partner closely on key searches with an experience level, enthusiasm, and passion not easily matched.
Rita received her BS in Business Administration from the Georgia Institute of Technology and her MBA in Finance and Marketing with an international concentration from Syracuse University.
She enjoys living in beautiful Beaufort, NC and visiting her daughter nearby in Raleigh and her son in San Francisco.