Build or Buy? Making Smarter Decisions About Your Talent Acquisition Strategy
With Subject Matter Experts
Nancy Drees, CEO & Founder, Vacare´Group
Matt Sitter, CEO, AFN
When it comes to hiring top talent, leaders often face a critical question: Should we build an internal recruiting function—or buy expertise through an outsourced partner?
In this special session, Nancy Drees, CEO and Founder of Vacare Group, joins AFN to demystify the tradeoffs between internal hiring and outsourcing recruitment. Drawing from her experience leading a boutique recruiting firm and building trusted client partnerships, Nancy will explore three key questions that every leader should consider:
• How do you become an effective partner to your outsourced recruiting firm?
• When is it time to build your internal recruiting team instead?
• What are typical pricing models—and how do you know what you're really paying for?
If you've ever struggled with knowing who to trust, how to assess value, or how to make the most of your recruitment dollars, this session is for you. Come away with a sharper understanding of how to align your hiring strategy with your business goals—and what to look for in a recruiting partner you can count on.
Nancy Drees
Nancy Drees is the CEO & Founder of Vacaré Group. She started her career working for a large national staffing firm for over a decade and then moved into the start-up tech industry. While working for a tech start-up company, she fell in love with the growing emerging company culture and decided to start her own firm in 2014 (Vacaré Group).
Nancy’s vision for Vacaré Group was to improve the outsourced recruiting experience for companies by becoming a partner to her clients. Vacaré Group is a relationship driven, consultative, and vision focused firm that offers an innovative pricing model.
With more than 20 years of recruiting experience, Nancy was awarded the Smart CEO award from Brava in 2016 and was also recognized as one of the leading recruitment professionals in the Greater Boston area, consistently topping LinkedIn’s Recruiting List since 2015. She has assisted with the growth of many start-ups resulting in many of her clients winning prestigious technology industry awards (Best Places to Work, NEVY awards, Bostinno Tech Madness, 50 on Fire, and many others).
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Nancy is extremely well networked in the Boston/surrounding areas and is recognized as one of Boston’s top female CEOs.
CEO & Founder, Vacaré Group
Matt Sitter
Matt Sitter is a partner at Sixth Wing, where he helps leaders and organizations create clarity, drive connection, and lead with intention. He brings a powerful mix of executive coaching, operational insight, and communication strategy to the firm’s work in burnout resilience, networked leadership, and human-centered performance.
Matt is also the CEO of Advantage Foundry Network (AFN), a global network of CEOs and Senior Executives committed to leveraging collective intelligence to find opportunity in change. His work spans industries and sectors—from private equity and healthcare to tech and defense—supporting leaders through inflection points, rapid growth, and transformational shifts.
He has held senior positions at The McChrystal Group and CrossLead and served in executive roles across the healthcare diagnostics and health tech industries. Whether advising a founder, coaching a CEO, or facilitating strategic alignment within a leadership team, Matt’s approach is grounded in the belief that:
“Leadership is the privilege of working through others.”
He is deeply committed to the idea that networks—not org charts—move the needle and that the right conversations can unlock breakthrough performance.
Matt holds an AB in Public Policy from Brown University and an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two sons.
CEO, AFN
