CohenTaylor Executive Search Expands Staff

March 29, 2018 – Minneapolis-headquartered CohenTaylor Executive Search has strengthened its team with the appointments of Lindsay Polyak as vice president of executive recruiting and Maggee Nelson as an executive recruiter.

Ms. Polyak brings 30 years of experience to CohenTaylor, spanning HR and organizational redesign, leadership development, change management and retained executive search. Previously, she ran her own firm, BenchStrength Executive Search, and before that served in various roles with Polyak Consulting & Search and Candler Group.

Her years of assessing the cultural components of organizations, the search firm said, make her uniquely suited to quickly understand the culture and context of an organization and identify leaders who can excel in that culture.

Ms. Polyak is an active member of the local Twin Cities community, serving on the board of governors for Opportunity International and the Global Missions advisory team for Christ Presbyterian Church. Additionally, she is an executive board member for the Hopkins Education Foundation and leads the HR committee for the TreeHouse board of directors. In addition, Ms. Polyak is a trained Social Justice Facilitator for the YWCA.

Ms. Nelson joins CohenTaylor after serving as a healthcare executive recruiter with DHR International. In that role, her clients ranged from large academic medical centers to multi-billion dollar, not-for-profit health systems to health plans and managed care organizations where she primarily recruited C-suite and physician executives. Ms. Nelson began her work in retained executive search in 2015 as a senior executive search consultant with Chandler Group. Previously, she was a corporate recruiter and served in executive search sourcing and support roles within human resources at Capella University, where she specialized in creating strong partnerships with her business leaders and managing the full life cycle of the recruitment process.

Veteran Recruiters

CohenTaylor is a boutique executive search firm dedicated to non-profit and public sector organizations. Founded by Chris Cohen and Don Taylor, the firm has conducted hundreds of leadership searches, locally and nationally, in multiple sectors. Ms. Cohen has worked in the executive search industry since 1997. In that time, she has built a practice focused on non-profit leadership and fundraising, marketing, sales, management, finance and operations search assignments. Mr. Taylor’s 30-year history as a non-profit executive has included primary roles in resource development, leadership and strategic direction for organizations in healthcare, education, human services and organized philanthropy.

CohenTaylor recently launched a search for Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s next president and CEO. The firm is looking for a leader with a passion for affordable housing, along with a fluency and aptitude for issues surrounding community development.

Search Firms Look to Minneapolis

The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is the second largest economic center in the Midwest, behind Chicago. Many executive search firms have experienced growth in the region in recent months. Here are a few from the Hunt Scanlon archives.

Odgers Berndtson opened a new office in Minneapolis and added three search professionals:  Ron Woessner, Chris Fryer and Shawn Woessner. Mr. Woessner was previously with Allen Austin, where he served as managing partner, global financial officer practice. Mr. Fryer was managing partner of the industrial practice at Allen Austin.

Professional services firm Patina Solutions recently expanded with the addition of Jodi Brendel as managing partner in Minnesota where she will lead the firm’s life sciences search practice. The Minnesota market is one a number of expanding U.S. hubs for sciences innovation, making Ms. Brendel’s expertise especially valuable to the firm in this market. Minnesota also has a long history of life science activity.

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Will Schatz, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media

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