Our Team
Runa Knapp
Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer
Runa is a Co-Founder and CBDO at FoundHer. In addition to business development, she wears many hats in the company's day-to-day operations. She performs full-cycle recruiting services, including drafting job descriptions, sourcing qualified candidates, conducting interviews with prospects, scheduling interviews with clients, and facilitating offer negotiations. On the candidate side, she conducts introductory meetings, provides valuable tips for job searching, helps with interview preparation, and suggests resume edits. With her background in accounting and her passion for creating, Runa is responsible for all financial aspects of the business and creating content and graphics for FoundHer’s marketing materials.
Before co-creating FoundHer, Runa was a CPA in the financial services audit practice at KPMG for 12 years. During her tenure at KPMG, Runa was jump-promoted twice and left the firm as a senior manager. In this role, she managed multiple team members, was the lead point person on several audit engagements, including real estate funds and properties, debt funds, and employee benefit plans, and was selected to teach at the local & national levels. Her teaching credentials include technical consolidation accounting guidance at an NYC-based CFO forum with leaders from the real estate industry and audit fundamentals at a national audit training of experienced senior associates.
During the last four years at KPMG, Runa worked part-time to spend more time with her young children. After leaving the firm in 2016 and taking a few years off to raise her kids full-time, Runa co-founded FoundHer, driven primarily by her desire to help other working professional moms find jobs that worked for them. Runa’s quick success in the recruiting business resulted from qualities she picked up during her professional career: the ability to quickly but diligently establish relationships and create meaningful connections (i.e., sift through the noise) and provide unmatched client service.
Runa currently sits on the Board of Directors of B Local Connecticut. Runa is an active PTA volunteer at her children's school, and the former Treasurer for the Young Woman's League in Westport, CT. In her free time, Runa enjoys traveling with her family and binge-watching shows (her favorites so far are Ted Lasso & Yellowstone), and she can’t function without her morning workout. Runa lives in Westport, CT, with her husband and two children.
Bachelor's degree: UCLA, Major in Business Economics and Minor in Accounting
Master’s degree: University of Southern California, Accounting
Jasmine Silver
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Jasmine is the Co-Founder and COO at FoundHer. As a former matrimonial and commercial litigator at a New York City law firm, Jasmine brings legal expertise, business acumen and emotional intelligence to her role at FoundHer. Jasmine provides a full range of recruiting services to clients and candidates, including drafting and reviewing job descriptions, advising on staffing needs, researching industry trends, sourcing and screening qualified candidates, and supporting clients through the interviewing and hiring process.
Jasmine particularly enjoys helping women refine their resumes and redefine their career goals, and working with corporate clients to increase diversity on their teams.
Jasmine brings creativity and a fresh perspective to the recruiting industry, and has been featured as a thought leader and speaker on podcasts, radio shows, television spots, and webinars, at industry events, and in print articles. She was a 2022 winner of the 40 Under 40 Fairfield County Awards and is included in the Marquis “Who’s Who in America” online biography list.
Jasmine has been an advocate for women and underserved individuals throughout her career. She taught creative writing to inmates at the Adrian Men's Prison while in college, and while on the Dean's List at law school, she was a recipient of the Public Service Certificate for volunteering her time with the Child Literacy Project and (formerly) In-Motion, a non-profit organization that provided free divorce and immigration legal services to low-income women. As a matrimonial and commercial litigator in New York City, she represented clients in all manners of family law cases, including domestic violence, financial support, and child custody. She argued and won favorable results in several notable and high profile cases before judges in Supreme Court and Family Court throughout New York. She also served as a legal consultant for the start-up "It's Over Easy," helping unrepresented individuals get divorced.
After starting a family and being offered no paid maternity leave at her law firm, Jasmine made the choice to leave her senior associate position to spend time with her young children, and vowed to work towards addressing inequities for women in the workplace in her next role. In 2019 Jasmine and Runa started FoundHer with the idea of helping professional, working mothers find jobs that worked for them. In just over three years, Jasmine has helped launch FoundHer into an industry leader and one of the few full service recruiting firms in the country focused on female talent and flexible opportunities.
Jasmine is an active representative on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee for her children's school district, participates in TEAM (Together Effectively Achieving Multiculturalism) events in her town, and volunteers with national non-profit the Sunrise Association, as well as with her children’s school and PTA. She lives in Westport, CT with her husband and two children, and when she's not working, you can find her reading novels, playing tennis, and cheering on the sidelines at her children’s sports games.
Bachelor's degree: Political Science: University of Michigan
Law degree: New York Law School