Liz Thomas

Liz Thomas is a seasoned Total Rewards and People Operations leader with more than a decade of experience building and scaling programs that help companies attract, retain, and grow exceptional talent. She currently leads Total Rewards at Handshake, where she’s been driving a full transformation of the company’s compensation and equity programs – developing new philosophies around promotion equity, equity refresh, geographic pay, and more. She also partners closely with the Compensation Committee on executive compensation, equity forecasting, and burn modeling.

Before joining Handshake, she led the People Operations and Total Rewards team at Checkr, where she built the function from the ground up – growing the team tenfold and overseeing everything from compensation and benefits to people analytics and HR tech. She’s also held People leadership roles at Omada Health, Rigetti Computing, and Lithium Technologies, where she played a key role in launching and refining total rewards programs, enhancing HR systems, and designing strategies that aligned people practices with business goals.