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Ridgeway Partners Tech Leaders on the Move – Q3 2021

By Newsletter

Here is the next installment of my tech talent newsletter. My goal is to give you relevant insights into talent, hiring, and corporate governance within the technology space. This newsletter will look at trends across the:

  • Board level
  • Executive (C-suite) level, and
  • Earlier stage talent (0-10 years of work experience)


Board Level Trend: Cross-Industry Diversity of Thought

We’ve heard it before—bringing different perspectives and wider experiences to the board level improves your company’s performance. But in addition to companies making their boards more gender and racially diverse, companies are now more often adding board directors from outside their industry who can bring a fresh and different perspective.

Examples of Cross-industry Board Appointments

  • Cisco appointed Marianna Tessel to NED. Tessel was formerly CTO at Intuit.
  • General Motors named Meg Whitman NED. Whitman comes from Hewlett-Packard, where she was President and CEO.
  • Cigna appointed George Kurian, former CEO of NetApp, to NED.

While the first outside board member is most often from the company’s industry, there is increasing cross-pollination between regulated industries, like financial services and tech, which makes sense; boards are looking at leaders who can provide a new way of thinking, but boards want those leaders to have experience operating in heavily regulated industry.

Examples of Fintech/Tech & Banking Cross-Industry Board Appointments

  • Marqeta named Martha Cumming NED. She comes from Wells Fargo, where she was Head of Compliance Strategy & Operations.
  • ACI Worldwide hired Mary Harma as NED. Harma was previously Managing Director of Enterprise Payments at Bank of America
    Corporation.
  • FVC Bankcorp appointed Meena Krishnan to NED. Krishnan comes from Inoventures, LLC, a national award-winning business analytics firm, where she was President and Chief Executive Officer.
  • Lendingtree named Erin Selleck NED. Selleck was previously Treasurer at Union Bank.


Executive Level Trend: Stopping the “Brain Drain”: The Rise of the Head of Digital Workplace & Tech Employee Experience Leaders:

After a long year and a half since the onset COVID, in a world that’s becoming more accepting of remote/hybrid work, there’s been a shift in focus on employee tenure and stopping the “brain drain”. Why? Because it’s typically harder to onboard employees due to less impromptu conversations and “water cooler” talk. Current employees also have a better sense of a firm’s culture, business objectives, and already have the internal relationships in place to move the needle.

Yet how do you ensure that these employees are not only happy but equally effective in a remote/hybrid work environment? By adding talent in newly created employee engagement/tech chief of staff roles, of course! This is different from finding a former HR leader or Chief Talent Officer to be your Head of Employee experience (like what PayPal did), I’m talking about companies finding a former tech leader to figure out how to make your employees happier and more efficient by leveraging tech.

Examples of moves

  • JPMorgan is taking this seriously and promoted JR Reid of the newly created employee experience and corporate tech group, which is
    modernizing the tech platforms employees internally to improve employee engagement and efficiency.
  • Salesforce hired Jill Tucker (a former CTO) as VP of Business Technology & Employee Experience
  • Raytheon hired Kelly Candler as VP, Digital Workplace & Employee experience. She was previously VP, Product Delivery, Digital Workplace at GE

Even if your firm will be going back into the office full-time and remote onboarding isn’t an issue, reversing the “brain drain” and improving employee tenure is still a pressing issue. Did you realize the average employee tenure is only 1.1, years at Google, 1.8 years at Uber and only 2.1 years at Dropbox? Clearly there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to employee tenure.


Earlier-Stage Talent Trend (0-10 years of work experience): Universities team up with private companies for mutual benefit

The demand for the top tech talent is so fierce that companies are engaging this talent as early as possible. They do this not just by setting up innovation labs (many of which are near universities), but also by funding AI departments and labs at universities themselves, in order to gain access to research, experts, and young talent (such as IBM’s $20 million pledge to Notre Dame’s Tech Ethics lab).

Additionally, companies are adding top AI & Computer Science professors as Advisors. One of the main benefits of doing this? These advisors can serve as recruiting/brand ambassadors by connecting their employer to their top students. By working with university professors, companies are able to have an inside view of (and early access to) up and coming talent, while also promoting brand awareness. On the flipside, professors are able to increase their salary, and prime themselves for potential future board appointments at tech companies.

Examples

  • Experian appointed Renato Vicente, associate professor of applied mathematics at the University of São Paulo, as chief data scientist in one of its research-and-development labs.
  • Morgan Stanley hired Michael Kearns, a part-time computer and information science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, as a
    senior adviser in its AI Center of Excellence.
  • JPMorgan Chase & Co. appointed Manuela Veloso, a Carnegie Mellon University professor currently on leave, to be its head of artificial
    intelligence research.

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About Us:
Ridgeway Partners is a 50-person, retained executive search firm with offices in Boston, New York and London. We specialize in technology, financial services and where they intersect.

Comments, Tips, Questions?
Email me at josh.king@ridgewaypartners.us

Spotlight on ESG Talent in Asset Management

By Insights

The Headlines

Tomorrow’s corporate winners will be those with a powerful ESG proposition. Without it, companies
will struggle to attract employees, customers, and investors. For Asset Managers, ESG will determine
whether a company is “investable”.

In this paper we look at what that means for ESG talent in Asset Management:

• Asset Managers are moving ESG roles from niche expertise to firm-wide integration
• Change is happening fast; Covid has accelerated existing trends and 2021 will be a critical year of
transformation
• Need to look beyond the Asset Management sector for talent as ESG responsibilities change.

Spotlight on ESG Talent in Asset Management

Financial Services

2020 Asset & Wealth Management Projects

By Ridgeway News

Investments

Director of Investments
Director of Fundamental Research
Emerging Markets Small Cap Team
Healthcare Portfolio Manager (2)
Senior High Yield Analyst
Board Member (3)
Equity Analyst

Distribution

Head of Intermediary Marketing
Head of National Accounts
Head of Offshore Sales
Head of Distribution
Head of Retail Marketing
Institutional Sales Director (2)
Director of Sales, RIA/Family Office/Private Bank
Group Vice President, Regional Market Leader (PWM)

Infrastructure

General Counsel (2)
Chief Financial Officer
Chief Administrative Officer
Chief Human Resources Officer (2)

FinTech

Chief Marketing Officer
Chief Revenue Officer (2)
Chief Data and Analytics Officer
Senior Vice President, Sales
Board Chair
Board Member (2)

Commitment to Excellence

99%

Completion Rate

37%

Diversity

85%

Stick Rate

Ridgeway Partners’ asset and wealth management team draws on decades of experience to identify and place talented leaders for global asset managers, investment boutiques, family offices, endowments and foundations, and private wealth managers.

T: (617) 399 1362
M: (857) 366 3133
kevin.mckeon@ridgewaypartners.us

T: (617) 279 8057
M: (617) 515 6636
cathy.whitehouse@ridgewaypartners.us

T: (617) 399 1363
M: (617) 448 4418
michael.fitzgerald@ridgewaypartners.us

T: (617) 279 0596
M: (781) 443 4915
jessica.cushman@ridgewaypartners.us

T: (617) 279 2181
M: (617) 694 7656
josh.king@ridgewaypartners.us

Charles preusse profiled by tuck school of business

By Ridgeway News

Charles F. Preusse II T’95 was an investment banker for 20 years before being recruited to Ridgeway Partners, a global executive search firm, eight years ago. Why the change? In investment banking he saw that the two critical drivers of a company’s success are capital and people. Preusse always enjoyed most the personal and social dynamics of what made a transaction work. Now, as a partner at Ridgeway, Preusse is a matchmaker of strategic talent: he works with his corporate clients as they build their senior management teams to position themselves for success. He and the team at Ridgeway are among the best in their business—their successful placement rate of 98 percent is peerless in their industry. “What really differentiates us is our ability as an international boutique to be incredibly focused on our clients,” he says. “The partners do the work. When you hire a Ridgeway partner, you get the partner.”

Tuck prepared Preusse well for both phases of his career. One thing he learned in the Tuck core was discipline. For example, before Tuck, he had never heard of a decision tree. Now he uses that framework every day to parse complex decisions into their component parts, and to understand and value the possible outcomes. “In my industry, I can lay out what might happen in a situation for CEOs and very senior people,” he says. “They have a lot going on. You can break it down and keep it simple. You learn a lot of that here.”

Tuck also gave Preusse confidence. At Columbia, he recalled he was surrounded by incredibly smart people. Tuck took it up a notch. “At Tuck, I found the student body that much more curious and intelligent,” he says. “Just being around that community of people for two years gives you a great deal of confidence when you come out. You are very comfortable interacting with the senior most people within organizations.”

Preusse has been out of business school long enough that the lessons from his MBA experience have seeped deeply into his mental map. He does not think about them every day, but he knows they are there. “You learn a lot at Tuck and you can always leverage it, but you don’t always realize you’re leveraging it,” he explains. “You’re just doing it.

REGION
New York, NY

UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
Columbia University, BA, 1990

PREVIOUS
SG Cowen & Co.

TUCK ACTIVITIES
TAG Executive Committee: Reunion giving team; corporate agent

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