Grace Niwa
Vice President - Global Talent Acquisition, Talent Intelligence & Early Career Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Grace Niwa is Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where she sets the vision and strategy for how the company attracts, engages, and hires top talent globally. She leads AI enabled, data driven recruitment initiatives that improve speed, quality, and workforce outcomes through operational excellence and internal and external partnerships. Previously, Grace served as Vice President of Talent Acquisition & Executive Search at Flagship Pioneering, where she built the talent acquisition function from the ground up and supported recruiting across 26 companies in the Flagship ecosystem.
Seminars
As AI takes over sourcing, screening, and other process-heavy activities, how can TA teams refocus on what truly drives hiring success? Vertex explores why, in an AI-enabled world, the real differentiator is no longer just technology, but a deeper understanding of talent through targeted segmentation, market insight, and expertise-driven recruitment
- Learn how Vertex is redefining the recruiter role from process manager to job architect, talent advisor, and market intelligence partner – through talent segmentation and executive-search-inspired discipline, recruiters are equipped to deeply scope roles, understand candidate motivations, map specialist talent pools, and navigate complex market dynamics with greater precision
- Discover how investing in recruiter capability, combined with AI-powered efficiency, enables a more strategic and resilient hiring model
- By building expertise-driven recruitment capabilities, training recruiters with executive search rigor, and aligning talent strategies to segmented markets, TA teams can deliver stronger stakeholder partnership, higher-quality shortlists, better candidate engagement, and more successful outcomes in highly competitive talent landscapes
This interactive Q&A explores what it takes to fundamentally transform the TA function, from the individual recruiter’s capabilities to the global operating model that supports them.
Drawing on both the AI-enabled recruiter role and the global TA standardization journeys explored in the Discover sessions, participants will examine the strategic choices that determine whether TA becomes a genuine source of competitive advantage.
- How do you build the recruiter capabilities needed for a segmentation and expertise-led TA model?
- What are the hardest trade-offs in building a global TA operating model, and how do you make them?
- How do you use AI to amplify recruiter expertise rather than replace it?
- What does a genuinely strategic TA function look like, and how do you measure it?
