Global Executive Search Alliance
ADVISING ON THE MOST IMPORTANT EXECUTIVE AND BOARD SEARCH ASSIGNMENTS
With a ‘client first’ approach based on a strict set of guidelines and service principles, GESA is comprised of highly experienced and proven executive and Board search consultants who provide superb and even unparalleled advice, insights and knowledge in their own domestic markets.
This is enhanced by our strong collaboration as an international resource through the GESA network of interdependent and committed consultants who are involved in each assignment by
identifying qualified candidates in their markets and ensuring their cultural affinity to the mandate in question, through to, if necessary, attracting, interviewing, assessing and reporting on them. This ensures that our clients receive the critical insights and judgments to select the best suited and qualified candidate, wherever this person may be located.
GESA is unique in that its consultants have almost all worked together in the same setting over many years throughout the world in successfully resolving our clients’ most important cross border leadership mandates. A majority of our professionals are former senior Partners of the same leading global firm to ensure consistency of values and approach, with the remainder sprinkled among other leading international firms to ensure that we remain outward and forward looking and cultivate the very best of a diversity of perspectives.
Patricia Lenkov
THOUGHT LEADER ON BOARD RECRUITING, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, COMPOSITION, AND SUCCESSION.
Patricia founded Agility Executive Search in 2008. She left the firm from January 2019 through May 2020 to become a Senior Managing Director at Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm. She returned in May 2020 to run Agility 2.0! Agility Executive Search specializes in corporate board and senior level executive search. To date, Patricia has conducted over 350 board searches for corporate clients, as well as, having worked with some of the world’s leading activist investors to recruit board directors. In 2018, Agility Executive Search was named as one of “America’s Best Executive Recruiting Firms” by Forbes and was included in the Hunt Scanlon “New York Power 60” List in 2018 and 2020.
Previously, Patricia was a member of the board of director’s practice at Spencer Stuart for four years, and prior to that, she spent six and a half years with Heidrick & Struggles where she conducted board and senior-level search assignments for Fortune 500 companies.
Prior to her work in the executive search field, Patricia worked for a Silicon-Valley based company, where she was the Regional Sales Manager for the province of Québec (Canada). Earlier in her career, she held the role of Assistant Director of the MBA Program at Concordia University where she was also an Adjunct Professor. During her time at Concordia University, the MBA Program was ranked 4th in Canada by Canadian Business Magazine.
Patricia is on the Advisory Board of BoardProspects.com, the world’s largest online boardroom community and founder of the Half Percent Project (halfpercentproject.org), an animal welfare non-profit.
Previously, Patricia was on the Board of The Blue Card, a member of the Family Advisory Council of the Komansky Center for Children’s Health at New York- Presbyterian Hospital Weil Cornell Medical Center, the New York Steering Committee of 2020 Women on Boards, and on the Women and Leadership Advisory Council at Concordia University in Montreal and. She was also a Trustee at Temple Israel of New York City.
Patricia is an active contributor to Forbes.com and author of Time’s Up: Why Boards Need to Get Diverse Now.
She holds a BA, with distinction, in psychology from McGill University and an MBA from Concordia University.
Andreas D. von Specht
PARTNER, AVSPECHT INTERNATIONAL TRUSTED ADVISORY
A native of Hamburg, Germany, Andreas D. von Specht gained a degree in Business Administration from the European Business School network in Germany, England and France.
He started his professional career in the consumer goods industry where he worked for almost ten years in various marketing, sales and general management positions with Mars Snackfood, Bacardi and Van Houten.
After joining the world’s largest and most prestigious executive search firm, Egon Zehnder International, in 1994, he was elected Managing Partner and shareholder in 1999. During his almost 17-year career with the global firm in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Paris, Andreas developed an expertise advising international company owners and entrepreneurs, increasingly specializing on small and medium-sized family companies and their governance issues. Consulting private capital investors in human resources and organizational challenges with regard to their portfolio companies was another focus of his work.
Andreas serves on a number of boards and represents members of his extended family on the advisory board of Berenberg Bank, Germany’s oldest private bank.