Our Ethos
The New Economy Needs NU Leadership
Why, you may ask, does the world need another executive search firm?
To be blunt, which is our style, we started NU Advisory because we saw a better way.
The four of us were very successful leaders in executive search, working with many of the most progressive companies and nonprofit organizations in the world. We admired their passion for excellence, the nimble, creative ways they continually reinvented themselves, and their relentless use of technology to work better and smarter.
Their success was a challenge: Could we deliver executive search that was as driven, innovative, and responsive as the organizations we served?
Yes, we could, we concluded, but to build the kind of transformational leadership they needed, we would need to build from scratch something that brought a whole new—you might say NU—perspective to process, culture, technology, and tools.
Thus NU Advisory Partners was born.
A challenge: Could we deliver executive search that was as driven, innovative, and responsive as the organizations we served?
The NU IDDEA
NU Advisory Partners is a retained executive search and advisory firm focused on senior executive, operating, and board positions. Our mission is broad: Helping organizations solve their toughest leadership challenges. Often, we’ll do this by recruiting exceptional individuals who can be a catalyst for growth. When a new hire isn’t the best answer, we will work with clients to advise on the human capital issues that are most critical to their success.
The bedrock of our service is our deep expertise. We have long-standing relationships with the smartest people across many industries. We know the issues and trends that are driving change throughout the economy. We’ve also built considerable experience working with private capital firms, including private and growth equity plus venture capital firms, on the unique challenges of their portfolio companies.
What sets us apart is not just what we do but how we do it. From the start, we committed to building our firm around five rigorous core values to bring out the best in our interactions with clients, with candidates, and especially within our own team. We call these values the NU IDDEA, and we commit to embedding them in everything we do.
Inspirational
We search beyond the ordinary. No idea is too bold. No candidate is beyond reach. What inspires us most is aspiring to be the best. Then delivering it.
Direct
We tell it like it is. When we offer our opinion, it’s not the “safe choice;” it’s our judgment about the right answer based on our research, data, and years of experience. You can count on us to spot the difference between a candidate who can guide your company to new heights and one who risks crashing it to the ground.
Driven
We believe that it takes the best to find the best. That’s why we are extremely selective about the professionals we invite to join the NU team. Everyone here shares our passion for excellence, our forthright fact-based style, and our ego-free culture of collaboration. Mumblers, prima donnas, and go-along-to-get-along types need not apply.
Empowering
We’ll surprise you. With the right answer, not the usual one. That’s because our teams are empowered to listen to every voice and explore every idea. We work across practice areas to find candidates that will drive your organization forward. We look beyond titles, degrees, and other traditional indicators of achievement to find candidates who have demonstrated the abilities you seek, whatever setting they have been in. You build a stronger, more diverse leadership team, and your executives get more challenging and fulfilling careers.
Agile
We act with urgency. If the situation changes, in the blink of an eye, we pivot without slowing down. We embrace technology that accelerates our work and broadens our insight. We’re automating search busywork, tapping into public and proprietary databases, and using AI to find the patterns and details that matter. We have more time for analysis and advice. You get better candidates sooner, with fewer unpleasant surprises.
So that’s why the world needs another executive search firm:
Because organizations today can’t thrive with executives who all look alike, think alike, and act alike. They need advisors who are as nimble and ambitious as they are.
If you want to broaden your company’s leadership team with inspirational executives prepared to meet the challenges of the new economy, we not-so-humbly suggest it’s time for a NU search firm.