The role didn’t exist yet. Neither, in most places, did the right person for it.
The problem
The brief required a profile that rarely comes in a single package: deep AI expertise, Tier-1 consulting credibility, the ability to run a global P&L, and the instinct to operate with influence rather than authority inside a partnership culture. The firm had looked, and the market had not delivered.
The solution
We mapped 186 executives across four distinct ecosystems: strategy firms, big tech, enterprise data and AI leadership, and AI platform founders. The brief needed reframing before it could attract the right people because this wasn’t a functional role, but rather an invitation to define how AI reshapes board-level strategy.
Assessment was rigorous, with structured interviews, stakeholder simulations, strategic presentations, and 360° referencing.
The outcome
The appointed leader was a former Global Head of AI at a publicly listed technology company, ex-Partner at a Tier-1 strategy firm, with a $500m+ global data business behind them. Four continents of experience, and thanks to our process, one very specific cultural fit.
The impact
This was a new revenue stream, built around a single hire. Getting the brief right and holding out for the right person ensured we could deliver above and beyond the highest expectations in a role that will transform this organisation.
Post-placement integration
Joining a partnership culture from the outside is one of the most nuanced transitions a senior leader can make. The incoming Global Head of Data & AI had operated at the highest levels of corporate technology – environments where authority is structural, decisions move through hierarchy, and scale is measured in headcount and budget. A partnership culture runs on different rules entirely. Influence has to be earned through credibility, not conferred through title. Consensus matters, even when it slows things down. And walking into a firm as the architect of a capability that partners have not yet decided they need requires a particular kind of patience that doesn’t always come naturally to leaders accustomed to executing at pace.
We worked closely with the incoming leader to help them navigate that transition – identifying the internal advocates who would open doors early, coaching through the moments where a more directive instinct needed to give way to a more collegiate one, and helping them frame the AI proposition in language that resonated with senior partners rather than technologists.
Building a new revenue stream inside an established firm is as much a political undertaking as a commercial one, and we remained close throughout those critical early months to ensure that the clarity of vision that made this individual stand out in the search process translated into the momentum the firm had appointed them to create.
