Behind the Screens: Conversations with Background Screening Pros hosted by Les Rosen

Send us Fan Mail Nina French is the founder of Inflection Point, a consulting practice focused on product development, innovation, and the future of human capital management. With a career spanning more than three decades, she built her expertise from the ground up at one of the first medical review offices in the country, grew with the company through its evolution into First Advantage, and has s...

Send us Fan Mail Bon Idziak has 28 years in the background screening industry spanning CIC, First Advantage, Applicant Insight, Checkr, and Accurate Background. He served five years as chair of PBSA's Government Relations Committee, sat on the PBSA Board of Directors, and has represented the industry in meetings with the Department of Justice, the FTC, the CFPB, the EEOC, and federal and stat...

Send us Fan Mail If you are in a decision-making role in this industry and you are waiting for a law, a court case, or a webinar to tell you what to do next, Kevin Bachman has a message for you: nobody is coming to save you. Kevin has been in background screening for 25 years, starting in radio and television news before falling into the industry while finishing a master's degree. He has seen...

Send us Fan Mail David Robillard is the co-founder of MultiLatin, the firm widely credited with bringing professional background screening standards to Mexico, Central America, and South America. After MultiLatin was acquired by First Advantage in 2021, David stayed through the Sterling integration before stepping back to focus on board advisory work. He currently serves on boards across backgroun...

Send us Fan Mail I have known Vivek Khanna for years. I see him at every PBSA conference, and I always wondered how someone becomes the person who figured out international background screening before most of the industry even knew it needed figuring out.  This conversation gave me the full picture, and it was even more interesting than I expected. Who is Vivek Khanna Vivek Khanna is the co-founde...

Send us Fan Mail Tammy Cohen is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Infomart and one of the most celebrated names in background screening.  Known across the industry as the Queen of Screen, Tammy has spent over 35 years shaping how screening companies are built, led, and run. In this episode, Les sits down with Tammy for a conversation that is part origin story, part industry history, and c...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Patti walks me through her entrepreneurial journey, starting from a typing service with an IBM Selectric III at age 21 to building a successful background screening company, SPI (Select Personnel International).  We dive into the early days of background investigations back in 1984 and how she transitioned from domestic PI cases to corporate screening. But what re...

Send us Fan Mail I told our listeners before we started recording that this particular guest could go three or four hours, and I meant it. Geoff Lee is one of the most extraordinary people I have met in this industry, and the screening career is honestly just the beginning of the story. Geoff started as a military intelligence officer, a juvenile probation counselor, a law enforcement officer, and...

Send us Fan Mail Todd Higey is a background screening attorney based in Birmingham, Alabama with 28 years of legal experience.  After a decade and a half of litigation work and nearly a decade as in-house counsel for ESS and Global HR Research, he now runs his own solo law practice serving CRAs, wholesalers, and data brokers across the country.  In this episode, Les sits down with Todd for a conve...

Send us Fan Mail Jamie Pelchat started her career sticking barcodes on file folders after school. She ended up VP of Delivery Transformation at HireRight and a first-term member of the PBSA Board.  In this episode of Behind the Screens, Les Rosen sits down with Jamie to talk about the winding, fascinating path between those two points.   In this episode you'll hear about: 1. How Jamie went fr...

Send us Fan Mail Timothy Baxter is the CEO and founder of Baxter Research, a wholesale criminal research firm he built from the ground up in San Francisco in the mid-1990s and has since grown into what many in the industry consider the gold standard for court-based criminal research. He is currently rolling out a fully rebuilt AI-based system after four years of development, and splits his time be...

Send us Fan Mail I've been lucky enough to talk to a lot of impressive people on this podcast, but this one was a little different. These three didn't just work in background screening. They built the backbone of it, and they're still at it. Matt O'Connor, Wanda Hess, and Rory Bogdon have a combined career span that stretches across fax clerks and help wanted ads, through the C...

Send us Fan Mail Today we are honoring and remembering my good friend Mike Sankey, a man who shaped this industry and shaped the people in it, myself included. Mike Sankey founded BRB Publications and wrote the books that became the bible of the screening industry, the MVR Book and the MVR Decoder. He was a founding force behind PBSA, the inaugural recipient of the PBSA Lifetime Achievement Award...

Send us Fan Mail I have to be honest with you, I was not sure what to expect going into this one. Four guests, a panel format, all of them colleagues and friends with each other. But within the first few minutes I knew this was going to be one of my favorite episodes. In this panel episode, Les Rosen sits down with the hosts of the Background Screening Collective to hear how the podcast got starte...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I sit down with an incredible panel of women leaders across the background screening industry to talk about how they built their careers, what keeps them engaged, and how the industry continues to evolve. What stands out is a shared theme: no one planned this career, but once they entered the industry, they stayed. Why? Because of the consta...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I speak with Jennifer Daimon, VP of Compliance and In-House Counsel at AccuSourceHR. Jennifer’s journey into the background screening industry started in a way many professionals can relate to. What began as a job researching public records while she attended law school eventually turned into a long-term career built around compliance, inves...

Send us Fan Mail Dan Shoemaker did not start in background screening. He began his career in politics and public policy, working on campaigns, serving in Virginia state government, and lobbying at the federal level. After 9/11, an unexpected opportunity led him into the screening industry. What he thought would be a short detour became a long and distinguished career. Along the way, Dan: Earned hi...

Send us Fan Mail In this international edition of Behind the Screens, I’m joined by the leadership team of the PBSA Europe & Africa Council: Martin Hardy, Will Hogarth, and Sally Ott-Lacoste. We explore how each of them entered the background screening industry, what keeps them passionate about it, and how the industry continues to evolve across Europe and Africa. We also preview the upcoming...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I sit down with Marc Bourne, a true industry veteran who has been part of background screening since 1999 and is still deeply engaged in shaping its future. Our conversation explores what it really means to build a long, meaningful career in background screening, from courthouse research and private investigations to executive leadership and...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I sit down with someone I’ve long admired—Nick Fishman, co-founder of Employee Screen IQ and now a partner at iCubed Advisors. Nick is one of those rare people who brings equal parts insight, creativity, and humanity to everything he does in this industry. We talk about how he built and sold Employee Screen IQ, his early marketing innovation...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I speak with Kym Kurey, Chief Revenue Officer at True Corpus and a powerful voice in the fight against human trafficking. Kim brings a compelling blend of industry expertise, advocacy, and creativity to the conversation—from her leadership in background screening to founding A New Life International, a nonprofit supporting trafficking surviv...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Behind the Screens , I sit down with Mike Coffey, founder of Imperative, host of the Good Morning HR podcast, and a familiar force in the background screening world. If you think you know Mike—think again. From his early days managing chinchillas and tearing up carpet with P90X, to founding one of the industry’s most meticulous and high-touch screening firms, Mi...

Send us Fan Mail "If you're going to call yourself an expert, make sure you are one." In this episode of Behind the Screens , I sit down with Mary Poquette, a pioneer in the background screening industry, co-chair of PBSA in its earliest years, and recipient of the Mike Sankey Lifetime Achievement Award. What follows is a rich, funny, and deeply insightful conversation that traces M...

Send us Fan Mail She sold beepers from a car trunk—and now she shapes the future of background screening law. This is Kellie O’Shea’s journey. In this unforgettable episode, I sit down with Kellie O’Shea, General Counsel at Creative Services, Inc. (CSI) and PBSA Board Member, to talk about hustle, heart, and the “it depends” moments that make up life as a background screening pro. We talk grit, gr...

Send us Fan Mail In this engaging episode of Behind the Screens: Conversations with Background Screening Pros , I sit down with Carl Cogdill—longtime industry veteran, founder of Astute Public Records, and one of the sharpest minds in the business. From his beginnings with dreams of becoming a Maryland State Trooper to his unexpected journey into the background screening world, Carl shares how eve...