Our Recruiting Team

The Edens Group is widely regarded as an inestimable resource which has cultivated an extensive network of contacts and established a wealth of subject matter expertise across multiple practice domains. As seasoned veterans in the recruiting industry, our team of established professionals has years of hands-on experience in creating successful, impactful and enduring relationships between individuals and companies.

  • Kelly M. Edens, Principal and Founder

    Office: 703-436-8699
    Mobile: 703-517-2613
    Email: Kelly@theedensgroup.com
    LinkedIn

    Kelly Edens, Principal and Founder of The Edens Group, LLC, has enjoyed notability as one of the most accomplished and highly regarded recruitment executives in the Washington D.C. Metro area. Throughout her career, Kelly has generated countless relationships with client companies and successfully placed hundreds of candidates into individual contributor, managerial and executive-level positions. Kelly’s client experience spans several industries, serving small to mid-size companies as well as Fortune 500 firms.

    Prior to founding The Edens Group, LLC in February of 2001, Kelly was a Partner with The Guild Corporation, the largest privately held technical search firm in the D.C. area in the 1990′s. From 1992 through 2001 she served in a number of capacities in addition to her role as Partner, including Managing Director and Senior Executive Search Specialist. Additionally, Kelly has been featured regularly as an industry expert for recruiting and employment articles by The Washington Post, Washington Business Journal and other trade publications. She has also presented strategy workshops, classes and seminars on recruiting best practices to multiple corporations in the Washington D.C. Metro area. Kelly began her career in Washington D.C. as a software analyst and ultimately became a project manager with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). A native Texan, she holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

  • Joseph Cook Edens III, Chief Operating Officer

    Office: 703-997-2123
    Mobile: 703-517-2026
    Email: cook@theedensgroup.com
    LinkedIn

    Joseph Cook Edens III is the Chief Operating Officer of The Edens Group, LLC. Cook joined The Edens Group in 2008, bringing over two decades of expertise in sales management and corporate operations from his previous experience in the finance and banking industry. Prior to joining The Edens Group, Cook operated and managed divisional relationships with several large banking institutions and served on the board of numerous financial services associations. He parlayed that experience into running the day-to-day operations of The Edens Group, which includes all infrastructure and support functions within finance, telecommunications, technology and operations. In an additional capacity, Cook manages and coordinates client needs with our recruiting staff to make sure all expectations are met and all delivery objectives are accomplished. He also staffs and manages our strategic recruiting partners and project-based solutions division.

    In an ongoing effort to spearhead process improvement, Cook is also responsible for originating SmartSearch™, our recruiting methodology which incorporates The Edens Group’s Recruiting Best Practices model with our core values of professionalism, integrity and perseverance. SmartSearch™ is our framework and guides our formal business conduct and the processes and services that we provide to our market. A native Virginian, he is a graduate of The Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia and received a B.A. degree in English and Economics from The Saint Lawrence University in New York.

  • Jim Boyd, Partner

    Mobile: 301-367-5475
    Email: jboyd@cirruscons.com
    LinkedIn

    Jim Boyd has spent over 24 years in the technology industry. He started his technology career with the very first commercial web hosting offering at UUNet in 1998.  While at that cutting-edge firm, he helped dozens of companies, including SAP, start their journey to the internet. He then transitioned to the IT recruiting industry, where he has spent the last 20 years helping thousands of great technical minds solve problems for his clients. The first of those 11 years in recruiting were spent in a sales role, including 9 years in sales at Convergenz, where he was continually the most successful salesperson in the company’s history. Jim then spent the next 6 years in Executive Leadership roles as EVP at both Convergenz and The Midtown Group.

    Jim has been extremely successful in helping companies find the best solutions and people to execute on their IT initiatives. He has worked with hundreds of companies from medium-sized businesses to the Fortune 25. In 2019, he started his own firm, Cirrus Group Consulting. Cirrus has become one of the industry’s most capable niche providers of Cloud engineers and architects, with many happy clients and hundreds of satisfied candidates.

    Jim has an Economics degree from the University of MD, College Park, and is AWS certified.  He enjoys spending time with his family. His activities of interest include mountain biking, traveling, Muay Thai, hiking, and being a taxi for his kids to all their activities.  He also enjoys giving back by partnering with non-profits that actively engage in training the next generation of Cloud engineers.

  • Cristiane Botura, Head of Strategic Research

    Office: 703-528-3637 ext. 106
    Mobile: 703-599-9858
    Email: cris@theedensgroup.com
    LinkedIn

    At The Edens Group, Cristiane Botura is the head of Strategic Research and the lead sourcer for the firm. Cris partners closely with senior members of the team to develop and implement a proactive sourcing and recruitment strategy focused on critical and demanding high-level positions to assist both commercial and federal government clients. As Cris is responsible for providing support to the recruiting team, she sources qualified candidates through various methods including recruiting events, database querying, job postings, networking events, and utilization of proprietary sourcing tools. She also develops employment branding strategies and key position plans to pursue inactive candidates in order to engage and generate an interest in new career opportunities. Additionally, she oversees our internal back-office efforts with relation to billing, financial and database systems. Her sense of urgency, commitment to service and passionate attitude make Cris an invaluable support resource to the firm. Cris’ professionalism and attention to detail enables The Edens Group team to operate both efficiently and effectively to meet our clients’ deadlines and deliverables. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree as well as a Certificate in Budget, Finance and Accounting from Georgetown University.

  • Phil Ojalvo, Partner

    Office: 301.525.4311
    Email: recruitpko@gmail.com
    LinkedIn

    Phil Ojalvo, one of The Edens Group’s Strategic Recruiting Partners, is an accomplished search executive with 20+ years of experience working with both established and high-growth companies. His areas of specialization include enterprise architecture, sales, talent acquisition, service delivery managers and IT security professionals. The majority of Phil’s career has been spent at Keane, Inc., a leading information technology consulting firm. He began his career there as a service delivery executive, responsible for multiple federal government and commercial accounts, and as Keane rapidly grew, Phil transitioned to the new role of Director of Recruiting for the Public Sector, averaging over 400 hires per year and managing a team of eight recruiters. Phil was also responsible for all key hires, including sales, senior service delivery staff members, security professionals, architects and recruiting professionals.

    Subsequent to his career at Keane, Phil was Director of Recruiting for two smaller IT consulting companies and successfully helped build the executive management teams as well as staff all the critical positions for the projects of those companies.

  • Sarah Wade, Partner

    Office: 434-288-0801
    Mobile: 760-792-6458
    Email: sarah@blueridgeresumes.com
    LinkedIn

    In order to deepen the service offerings we provide to our candidates, and address the frequent requests we receive for resume assistance, The Edens Group has engaged in a strategic partnership with Sarah Wade, the Founder of Blue Ridge Resumes.  Sarah established Blue Ridge Resumes after several years of freelance resume writing with outplacement and recruiting firms. She has written hundreds of resumes for individuals across the country, and is passionate about helping them achieve their career goals.

    As a perfect complement to our high-touch professionalism at The Edens Group, partnering with a superior resume writing firm like Blue Ridge offers an additional range of options to our candidates.   All of the Blue Ridge writers are Certified Professional Resume Writers, and they work one-on-one with clients across all industries to tailor individual professional experiences and career goals. They are not a high-volume resume mill, but rather a strategic branding firm, because they recognize the value in crafting each document specific to a client’s unique needs.  Sarah holds a CPRW certification, and is a member of the PARW/CC and the NRWA.  Sarah has a diverse career background, spanning time in the Marine Corps, non-profit sector, and international corporate organizations.

  • Sharla Borden, Partner

    Office: 757-420-2150
    Mobile: 757-803-2054
    Email: sharla@hiremerge.com
    LinkedIn

    Sharla Borden is a Senior Technical Recruiter with experience in full life cycle recruiting locally and nationwide on a contingency basis.  Her background includes government and commercial recruiting in both corporate and agency environments in support of Health Care, IT, Aviation, Logistics, Retail, Academic, and Financial clients and is a welcome addition to The Edens Group’s Partner list.  Sharla has demonstrated Recruiting experience on both the East Coast and the West Coast and she has the ability to find niche candidates for very specific roles and industries.

    Sharla has recruited for IT and Engineering positions ranging from Program and Project Management to IT Specialists with skills that include Network Infrastructure and Security, Database Administration, System Architecture and Development, Web Architecture and Development, Cloud Computing, and Healthcare Systems.

    Sharla is a Virginia Beach native.  Her husband, Vincent, is a Navy Diver also originally from Virginia Beach.  Their family consists of a couple of big dogs and lazy cats.  Sharla spends her free time with friends and family, weightlifting, biking, gardening, and relaxing at the beach.

  • Karrie Polite, Partner

    Office: 703-416-1391
    Mobile: 703-304-6845
    Email: karrie@politegrp.com
    LinkedIn

    Karrie Polite and The Edens Group have had a Recruiting relationship spanning more than 10 years, whereupon we had the pleasure of working side-by-side to build Kadix Systems, an 8A management consulting firm, from 40 to 350 employees.  Karrie has more than 20 years of executive leadership experience, successfully guiding organizations and acquiring talent for corporations throughout the U.S.  Karrie served for 5 years as the Director of Marketing and New Business Development for SPS Technologies, an IT and Biotechnology consulting firm before launching The Polite Group as the retained executive search arm of Polite & Associates. Karrie is the managing principal at Polite & Associates, LLC, a talent acquisition and mindfulness coaching firm established in 2007.

    Prior to joining SPS,  Karrie was the principal and owner of Strategic Source, a telecommunications engineering firm located in Washington, DC for 3 years before crafting the merger of Strategic Source with SPS Technologies.  Karrie attended Santa Monica College as a business major and is a Washington, D.C. native, resides in Arlington, VA and is in the process of completing her first novel, slated for release early 2018.