Management Team

Bringing more than 15 years of executive recruiting and research experience to her role, Stacie has worked with a broad range of clients including Fortune 100 companies and early stage start-ups. Her current practice concentrates on the recruitment of executives for venture capital funded start-ups and for established, high-growth companies in consumer branded goods, retail, consumer and business technology and life sciences. She is responsible for business development and operational oversight. Her work is most often focused at the senior executive level where the goal is to assist the CEO and/or Boards of Director to hire top talent.Prior to starting The Pacific Firm, Stacie was an associate at Heidrick and Struggles in their San Francisco life sciences practice. She led a successful practice for a boutique retained search firm with a focus in biotech and high-tech consumer products and financial services for two years prior.

Born in the Pacific Northwest, Ms. Blair began her career in the United States Air Force where she supported U.S. overseas intelligence operations as a communications analyst. Stacie had tours of duty in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East from 1982 – 1985. She later trained as a Radar Air Traffic Controller responsible for arrival and departure aircraft at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California from 1985 – 1987.

Stacie has recruited executives into both public and private companies including Charles Schwab, Design Within Reach, Ziff Davis Publishing, Reebok, The Guild, Napa Style, White hat Security, Genentech, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and more. The searches were for a broad range of positions in sales, marketing, human resources, operations, and finance.

Since its inception, The Pacific Firm has successfully closed over 3000 projects at all levels of seniority. Since 2000 The Pacific Firm has been ranked in the top 5 by the San Francisco Business Times.

Stacie completed her Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from California State University in Sacramento. Now residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is an avid rock climber.

Nancy’s earlier positions included Assistant Vice President of Human Resources with Bankers Trust Company and Human Resources Officer with American Express Company, both in New York. Nancy attended New York University Graduate School of Business after receiving her B.A. in English literature from the State University of New York at Albany where she played on the NCAA Div III tennis team. She is also the author of a bestselling four-book series published by Viking Penguin, The Tao of Pug. Originally from Scarsdale, New York, Nancy now resides in Berkeley, California.

Ms. Sipola joined The Pacific Firm in 1994 and returned again in 2010 to head up Operations and leads a recruiting practice focused primary on the retail and consumer sectors. Ms. Sipola has developed and implemented operating models to build talent in emerging, and publicly traded companies.
Ms. Sipola is responsible for managing the recruiting staff, providing oversite on all projects and working directly with clients and stakeholders to ensure client satisfaction. Ms. Sipola has more than 16 years of human resources experience in a variety of industries including high-technology, consumer products and retail.

Ms. Sipola spent over two years as a Senior Recruiter with a global engineering firm, Arup. Ms. Sipola helped build Arup’s Seattle and Los Angeles offices placing multidisciplinary engineers to support Arup’s work on the world’s most prestigious and sustainable buildings including the “Water Cube” featured in the 2008 Olympics and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters.

Ms. Sipola’s previous positions include Senior Recruiter with The Clorox Company and Executive Recruiter with PeopleSoft prior to the acquisition by Oracle, and Bare Escentuals.

Upon graduating from the University of California at Davis, she went to work for Clancy Associates where first worked for Stacie Blair, the CEO of The Pacific Firm.

Residing in Pleasant Hill, California, Ms. Sipola spends her time volunteering for various local animal shelters and enjoying the company of her husband and dogs.

As Director of the Emerging Technologies Practice, Rachel manages relationships with leading edge technology companies. She has developed and implemented operating models to build talent in emerging, and publicly traded companies. Her expertise includes executive recruitment, OD, compensation, and strategic change activities. Rachel has more than 15 years of human resources experience in a variety of industries including high-technology, life sciences, consumer products and retail. Prior to her role at The Pacific Firm, Rachel was the Director of Talent Acquisition for Yelp, one of the largest social networking, user review, and local search site in the world. In this role Rachel developed a keen understanding of emerging technologies and the digital landscape, preparing her to lead the practice for The Pacific Firm. She spent two years prior as an Executive Recruiter at Peet’s Coffee and Tea where she gained valuable knowledge of retail food services. Her six years prior was spent at a boutique retained search firm heading up their research department. In this role, she worked closely with venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley to place C-level candidates in early stage telecommunications start-ups. Rachel helped build Scient, an internet marketing consulting firm, grow from 100 employees to over 1200 in the space of one year. Following her tenure at Scient, she moved to Lante where her expertise was utilized by the company to build competitive intelligence and manage the college recruitment processes.

Rachel joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and as a Recruiting Specialist placing Managing Consultants and Associate Partners in Accenture’s Executive Government Practice in Washington, D.C..

Upon graduation from the University of California at Berkeley, she went to work for the Marriott Corporation in Human Resources. Residing in Emeryville, California and Rachel spends her free time volunteering and enjoying the company of the more than 200 relatives she has in the Bay Area.