Paloma Thombley is an HR leader specializing in people programs and HR business partnership strategies in startups, established tech, and public sector / not for profit organizations. She was previously the Chief Human Resources Officer of Handshake, where she helped to scale the company from 160 employees to 650+ employees across multiple countries. As part of its early scaling team, she helped to develop its earliest policies supporting family leave and support for new parents along with the structures needed to develop managers and prepare teams for rapid growth.

She is currently the VP, People Experience at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts Wikipedia as well as twelve other free-knowledge projects, and supports the communities who create and curate their content. There, she oversees the teams responsible for HR Business Partners and global People Operations across more than 40 countries. Paloma resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two sons.