From the earliest days of executive search to shaping the leadership of companies like Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Spotify, few people have seen more of Silicon Valley’s hiring successes—and failures—than Jeff Markowitz and Peter Clark.

In this exclusive episode of Truth Works, host Jessica Neal sits down with two of her closest professional allies and heavyweights in the world of venture capital and executive talent. Together, the three share over 30 years of experience navigating the highest-stakes hiring environments in the tech world.

Jeff Markowitz, currently an advisor at Greylock Partners, shares the incredible story of being hand-picked by Google CEO Sundar Pichai to reshape senior leadership at Alphabet. Peter Clark, a Talent Partner at Accel for over 13 years, opens up about the evolution of search and his role as a "fifth Beatle" in the founding of True Search.

This conversation goes beyond standard interview advice. The trio pulls back the curtain on:

• Why most companies get hiring wrong, even today.
• The dangers of "war for talent" thinking vs. relationship building.
• The specific simulation techniques the best leaders use to interview.
• The critical, and often missing, step of referencing as a management playbook.
• How great CEOs, like Scott Dietzen (formerly of Pure Storage), learn the job before they even make the hire.
• The one question Jessica asks to immediately identify a truly great recruiter.

Whether you're a founder looking to make your first executive hire, a leader struggling to build a balanced team, or a recruiter looking to level up from "salesy" to strategic, this is a masterclass you cannot afford to miss.

Timestamps: –

Intro: Reconnecting with friends.

– Peter Clark's unique career path: Graphic design to software engineer to executive search.

– Accel's unique investing approach and portfolio impact.

– Jeff Markowitz's journey: CPA to opening the Silicon Valley office to Greylock. – The call from Sundar Pichai: Mapping out the senior talent role at Google/Alphabet.

– Why hiring is still so hard (and wrong) in 2026. – The flaw in prioritizing "diligence" over assessment.

– The true cost of a bad hire (and why it's not what you think).

– Moving beyond standard questions to "unfiltered conversations."

– How to simulate working together during the interview process.

– The best CEOs get this one thing right (Pure Storage example).

– How can CEOs really identify great recruiting talent?

– Closing thoughts on friendship and mutual career impact.

Claude Silver is the world's first Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia — one of the largest independent agencies on the planet with over 2,000 employees globally. What started as an unexpected conversation over breakfast with Gary Vaynerchuck turned into a decade-long mission to build what he calls "the greatest human organization in the history of time."

Her only job description? "Touch every single human being and infuse the agency with empathy."

Claude never wanted to be in HR. She started in grocery stores, survived the dot-com boom and bust, built a career as a digital strategist at some of the world's biggest agencies, and stumbled into the most human role in business almost by accident. Today she leads a global people operation and has written the book — literally — on what it means to show up as yourself at work.

In this conversation, Claude and Jessica Neal go deep on why most workplaces are quietly breaking people, why the traditional path to leadership is fundamentally broken, and what it actually takes to build a culture where people don't just perform — they thrive.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why psychological safety disappears long before performance numbers start dropping
• The difference between culture fit and culture addition — and why mixing them up destroys teams
• The "Lie Exercise" Claude uses to dismantle imposter syndrome in real time
• Why promoting your best people without coaching them is one of the most damaging things a company can do
• How to scale empathy across a 2,000 person organization without losing the human touch
• Why heart-led leadership isn't soft — it's the fastest path to real accountability and zero drama
• What cynicism, politicking and late night Slack messages are really telling you about your culture
• Why the loneliest role in any company might just be the one responsible for everyone else's wellbeing

The moment that changed everything: At 19, Claude left college, strapped 80 pounds onto her back and spent 93 days on an Outward Bound wilderness program in the Colorado Rockies. No tent. No toilet paper. No way out. What she came back with wasn't just confidence — it was a blueprint for servant leadership that still runs through everything she does today.

On the book: Be Yourself At Work is Claude's answer to watching talented people shrink in the workplace — just like she once did. It's a practical, honest, deeply personal guide to self-awareness, team dynamics, and leading with courage. Part memoir, part playbook, part mirror.

Claude Silver's book Be Yourself At Work is available now everywhere books are sold.

In this incredibly candid conversation, Nikki Krishnamurthy (Chief People Officer at Uber) joins Jessica Neal (former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix) to discuss the high-stakes reality of leading people through crisis, transformation, and the AI revolution.

Nikki opens up about the "Strategic Calmness" required to navigate Uber’s most turbulent years, from handling global layoffs to dismantling a culture of leaks and entitlement. She shares the internal mechanics of her 13-year partnership with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, explaining why a Chief People Officer must act as a business leader first and why being "the mirror" for a CEO is the most important, and loneliest, part of the job.

We dive deep into:

• The C-Suite Burden: Why the HR role has shifted into a hybrid of Chief Medical, Diversity, and AI Officer.
• The "Entitlement" Trap: How Uber moved from "investigating everything" back to a culture of high judgment and "doing the right thing."
• Managing Up: The exact moment Nikki gave Dara feedback and how that blunt honesty built a foundation of radical trust.
• AI vs. Innovation: Why Nikki is prioritizing "AI-native" college grads and her warning to big companies: Don't let efficiency kill your ability to invent.
• The Art of "Disagree and Commit": Navigating executive hires and knowing which hills are worth dying on.

This is a masterclass in leadership, human psychology, and the raw reality of what happens behind the closed doors of the world’s biggest tech companies.