Getting your most important hires right

Executive search and talent advisory from someone who's been on the other side of the table.

Hiring a senior leader is one of the highest-stakes decisions a company makes — and one of the easiest to get wrong. The resume looks great, the references check out, and six months later, everyone knows it's not working.

We approach talent differently. Michael has spent 25 years hiring, managing, developing, and coaching senior leaders — as a COO, Chief People Officer, and fractional leader embedded in more than 30 organizations. He's been the hiring manager, the onboarding partner, the person who has to deliver hard feedback when it isn't working, and the coach who helps leaders grow into roles that initially felt too big. That full picture is what we bring to every search and every hiring engagement.

Executive search

We conduct retained searches for senior leadership roles — particularly in people, operations, and general management. Our approach is relationship-driven: we source through a deep personal network across media, technology, and mission-driven organizations, and we assess candidates the way an experienced operator would, not the way a recruiter does.

What makes a search with us different:

• We evaluate candidates for leadership trajectory and cultural fit, not just skills and experience — because we've seen firsthand what predicts success in a role and what doesn't

• We draw on coaching and assessment tools when a deeper read on a finalist would be valuable

• We stay involved through onboarding, because finding the right person is only half the job — setting them up to succeed is the other half

Talent advisory

Not every company needs a full search. Sometimes what you need is sharper thinking about how you hire — before, during, or after the search itself.

• Role design and hiring strategy — before you start searching, make sure you're searching for the right thing. We help you define the role, the profile, and the success criteria so the search doesn't drift.

• Interview process design — structured, bias-aware processes that surface real signal. Scorecards, question frameworks, and debrief protocols that make your team's hiring decisions more consistent and defensible.

• Candidate assessment — a second opinion on finalists from someone who has hired and managed at the C-suite level. Particularly useful when the decision is close or when the stakes are high.

• Onboarding design — the first 90 days are where most senior hires succeed or fail. We help you build an onboarding plan that gives your new leader a real chance.

How talent work connects to our broader practice

Many of our talent engagements grow out of — or lead into — our advisory and coaching work. A fractional CPO engagement might surface the need for a key hire. A search might reveal that the leadership team needs coaching support before a new hire can succeed. We see the full picture because we do the full range of work.

This is one of the advantages of working with a practice that sits at the intersection of coaching, people strategy, and talent: we're not just filling a role. We're thinking about the organizational context the role sits in.

What Clients Say

Looking for your next key hire?

Whether you need a full retained search or a sharper approach to a hire you're already working on, we'd love to hear what you're looking for.