Nadeen Shatara may have the best poker face we’ve ever seen. But is it a poker face if you actually have a great hand? With five years of experience working in recruiting at Fenwick & West and Gunderson Dettmer in San Francisco and New York, Nadeen has a direct line to every hiring partner in the startup space on either coast. 

Raised first generation in San Francisco, Nadeen went to an elite all-girls school – the kind where you “graduate in white gloves and a gown from a bridal shop.” Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t a fan of the old-school culture there and found most of her friends on club sports teams. Nadeen went on to study psychology at Marymount (she readily admits that she loves being the person people call in a crisis) before joining a peer-to-peer rental car startup and then an architectural firm. At those jobs she found that she was most drawn to working with and mentoring people, so she decided to pursue a career where she could help guide others.

With absolutely no intention of breaking into law, Nadeen turned to her brothers, a tax attorney and a software engineer, asking if they knew of any jobs in recruiting. The tax attorney put Nadeen in touch with a friend at Fenwick, and Nadeen decided to take the interview for the practice. To her surprise, she loved the people. In particular, she loved the last person to interview her, Julieta Stubrin. During her three and a half years at Fenwick, she helped the firm rapidly expand its footprint and in 2019, she moved across the country to help Fenwick grow their New York office. In 2021, she joined Gunderson in New York, another office in insane growth mode, where she got her reps in reviewing resumes and hiring laterals.

Nadeen appreciates that attorneys (especially litigators and tech transactions attorneys, according to her) are “very matter of fact,” like her. She enjoys a dry gin martini and strongly feels that New York pizza is overrated, and that Steph Curry is underrated (“even though he gets a lot of credit, he should get more. He just is that good.”). More than anything, she’s looking forward to more candidate contact as an agency-side recruiter, which fits perfectly with Whistler’s “candidate-first” ethos.

Favorite historical moment:

"Every time the Warriors have won an NBA Championship."

Dream job:

"Travel Journalist - I would love to spend my life traveling, learning about different cultures and places, and writing about it.”

Guilty pleasure tv show:

"Law & Order SVU (all 23 seasons, twice). ”