OUR LEADERS CARE ABOUT MORE THAN JUST GETTING GREAT PEOPLE TO WORK.
We want to set you up for
success, long-term.
WHO ARE KNA'S LEADERS?
Kim Smitz
Kim Smitz is the CEO and founder of KNA Solutions. She is a seasoned staffing veteran with over 15 years of experience in the hiring & recruitment industry. Prior to KNA, Kim held several roles leading high-volume staffing operations. Kim was the head of North America Agency Relationships at Amazon. Her role was to manage all of the staffing agencies in North America for Amazon across all business lines. In 2015, Kim led the largest hiring initiative in Amazon’s history - hiring 25,000 direct hires in a 6-week period as the single-threaded Project Leader. Kim also led Amazon’s first ever Prime Day Summer Sale in which she was in charge of hiring thousands of workers across North America for 2-week temporary assignments. After heading up staffing at Amazon, Kim was recruited to Chewy.com, an online retailer of pet food and other pet-related products, as the Head of Staffing Operations where she built out Chewy's high-volume hiring for the fulfillment network leading up to the acquisition by Petsmart.
KNA Solutions was borne of a critical yet essential niche need in the staffing world – a company that’s nimble, responsive, able to fill extremely high-volume labor orders (triple digits weekly) on short notice consistently week over week while delivering high-quality workers. Flexing to the ambiguity in labor forecasts with the ability to quickly scale up as business need dictates is critical in this space. KNA gravitates to start-up businesses in hyper-growth mode where high-volume labor is often the biggest barrier to taking their business to the next level.
In July 2019, Kim was named to the Staffing Industry Analysts’ list of “40 Under 40 in Staffing” for 2019.
Amelia Christy
Amelia Christy is the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of KNA Solutions. Similar to Kim, Amelia was a staffing specialist at Amazon, heading up the High-Volume Hiring team in Dallas, Texas. In 2014, Amelia joined the newly-formed high-volume hiring team at Amazon’s largest fulfillment center in the network, in Fort Worth, TX, and successfully led the staffing team to a network record-breaking 16,000 fulfillment associate hires at a 97% fill rate for 2015, 7,000 of which were in Q4 alone. Amelia was recruited to join the rapidly-expanding team at Chewy.com as a regional recruiting manager. In this role, she led the processes to create critical operational efficiencies as well as standardize workflow processes in the high-volume recruiting business across the network, while directly overseeing the successful hiring of fulfillment specialist positions at 2 key buildings. In addition, she oversaw the launch of the network’s first fulfillment center in Texas, which was the most successful building launch in Chewy history, achieving 100%+ fill rates from Day 1, thus allowing Chewy to fulfill the customer promise while navigating an exponential growth rate. The successful launch of DFW was the linchpin of the Chewy/PetSmart acquisition deal, worth a record-breaking $3.35B as the largest e-commerce acquisition to date. With a background in retail merchandising and marketing, she understands customer and client needs and how to achieve goals that others may consider unrealistic or unattainable.
Nick Killip
Nick Killip is KNA’s Chief Business Officer and co-founder of KNA Solutions. Nick began his recruiting career in in the medical field at Scribe.ology, LLC, where he provided medical scribes to physicians in emergency rooms, family practices, specialty clinics, and more. While in this role, he managed many of the company’s HR functions as well, including onboarding, compliance, and recruiting. Nick also led the development of the company’s University Recruiting program, attracting top talent among students in pre-med programs at colleges and universities across the state of Texas. He joined Amazon in 2015, where he played a critical role in the successful hiring of over 7,000 new hires in both a direct and seasonal capacity. At the peak of Q4 2016, Nick successfully filled over 1,000 hires in a single week. In this role, he also helped support the launch of a new fulfillment center and worked closely on the network’s brand-new node hiring initiative, which was being tested in the DFW market. Nick was recruited to join the Chewy.com team in order to lead the launch of the network’s first-ever building in the state of Texas. He was quickly promoted to regional recruiting manager, overseeing two fulfillment centers, in the process of launching a third, when the opportunity to launch KNA Solutions arose.
John Nicholson
John Nicholson is KNA's Chief People Officer. John started his staffing industry career over 20 years ago at Kelly Services. During his tenure at Kelly, John held every possible role within the field organization (from evaluation clerk to Sr. District Manager). After spending 10 years managing two of Kelly’s largest and most profitable markets across the United States he felt it prudent to learn the corporate side of Kelly’s business. John relocated to Kelly’s world headquarters and spent 8 years managing large global clients, including Amazon, General Electric, Kraft Foods, Wells Fargo Bank, as well as many others. After leaving Kelly in 2016 John spent the last 2 years working for Manpower. While at Manpower, John was responsible for all of Manpower’s national accounts that operated within an MSP ecosystem. John spent much of his time developing strong relationships with many national clients that needed consulting on MSP and/or VMS best practices. His ability to manage large client relationships meanwhile navigating and optimizing internal operations is the reason why KNA brought John to their organization. John also volunteers his time while not at work for the Clarkston Area Youth Assistance as their Executive Director and Board Member. John enjoys giving back his time to this worthy cause that specializes in serving under privileged children in the community by sponsoring skill building scholarships, camp, and counseling services.
