Citadel's chief people officer leaves the firm as hedge funds battle for talent

• Sjoerd Gehring has left the $67 billion hedge fund Citadel, Business Insider has confirmed.
• Gehring was the chief people officer at the hedge fund, joining from Apple in late 2024.
• Hedge funds are battling each other for top trading talent, and recruiters have become stars, too.

Less than two years after leaving tech giant Apple for Ken Griffin's $67 billion hedge fund, Sjoerd Gehring has left Citadel.

Gehring was the hedge fund's chief people officer, starting in late 2024 after stints at Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Accenture.

"We appreciate Sjoerd's time with us and wish him the best. Our People Team remains focused on their important work attracting top talent and developing colleagues to build unparalleled careers at Citadel," a Citadel spokesperson told Business Insider. Gehring declined to comment.

The ongoing talent war in the hedge fund industry has made top recruiting personnel critical hires in their own right. Gehring had a firm-wide remit that included other traditional human resources functions, such as talent development, performance evaluation, and compensation. His corporate bio was removed from the Citadel website as of Friday morning.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Gehring described how the firm transformed a floor of Citadel's midtown Manhattan offices into a talent and recruitment center with a discreet, VIP entrance and a curved 8-by-25-foot TV displaying stats about the manager and employees as they went about their daily routines.

Gehring replaced Matt Jahansouz, who left in 2024 after three years on the job to join online clothing company Quince.

The firm's business development ranks — the internal recruiting teams that source and vet portfolio managers — have also had to deal with some turnover recently. The most recent departure was Eleanor Sharkey, who led business development for the firm's international equities arm out of London.

A person close to the Miami-based manager said Sharkey's deputy, Freya Maynard, has taken over for her, and the firm has also promoted Mackenzie Snyder and Olivia Cascio to head BD for Surveyor, one of its stockpicking units, and Fixed Income and Macro, respectively.

Citadel has also made five external hires focused on recruiting talent for its fundamental stock-picking businesses. The additions come from firms including JPMorgan and Barclays in the last two months. Verition executive Sapna Vir will join the firm in December as Citadel's head of BD for its credit unit.

While BD execs at Citadel report into the chief people officer, the company's top recruiting exec, they work and recruit for business unit leaders such as Justin Lubell in Global Equities or Navneet Arora in Global Quantitative Strategies.