David Barrett Partners Names Senior Advisor

February 6, 2017 – Executive search firm David Barrett Partners has appointed Vanessa Bailey as a senior advisor.

The appointment formalizes a collaboration that dates back over 15 years and provides the search firm with an expanded private equity practice to augment its search capabilities for family offices, traditional asset managers and endowments & foundations.

Ms. Bailey has over 25 years of private equity recruitment experience at senior levels. She has spent the past 18 years running Cressida Partners, a New York-based boutique search firm focused exclusively on recruiting deal professionals for an array of top tier private equity firms and family offices.


Family Office Recruiting

These days, culture fit is a critical factor in recruiting for virtually any high level position. But when it comes to identifying someone to lead a family office, that particular requirement, plus a little trust sprinkled in, is heightened. A traditional family office is a business run by, and for, a single family. Its sole function is to centralize the management of a significant family fortune, and typically, these organizations employ staff to manage investments, taxes, philanthropic activities, trusts, and legal matters. With millions and sometimes billions of dollars at stake and multiple generations involved, finding just the right person for this type of role calls for the most thorough of assessments. It is a process that reaches into a family’s most personal matters, with financial considerations among the most obvious. Identifying the right candidates, meanwhile, can also be a challenge, as a prospect’s skills and experience are essentially just a starting point. Given that family office leaders typically stay in their jobs for as long as a generation, one cannot overstate the need to find a truly proper fit ….. Here’s some further reading from Hunt Scanlon Media.

Wealth Effect: Identifying Unique Leaders to Run a Family Office
Just a handful of executive recruiters serve the family office environment. Linda Mack, founder and president of Chicago-based Mack International, is one. With an expertise in asset and wealth management, she and her colleagues have helped to staff some of the more prominent family offices over the last 15 years.


Ms. Bailey maintains a portfolio of long-standing clients for whom she is both recruiter and advisor. She has completed searches for investment professionals at the vice president, principal and partner levels in North and South America, Europe and Asia. She began her career at Russell Reynolds Associates where she worked in New York, London and Tokyo. From there, she joined Highland Search Group.

“Vanessa brings us a long and respected recruiting track record in the private equity arena,” said David Barrett. “She fits seamlessly into our collegial culture where a premium is placed on integrity, responsiveness and results.”

“Having partnered with David Barrett and his team over many years, I am delighted to have the opportunity to officially become part of their highly respected franchise,” said Ms. Bailey.

Boutique Investment Specialist

David Barrett Partners is a boutique recruiting specialist with offices in New York, Boston, London and Hong Kong. It serves traditional and alternative money managers, endowments, foundations, family offices and sovereign wealth funds. The firm was founded in New York by a team of investment management recruiting industry veterans from large, multinational search firms who were drawn to establishing a focused investment and wealth management boutique.

Investment Professionals In Demand

Just recently, the firm was selected by Dartmouth College to lead its search for a new chief investment officer. According to recruiters specializing in the investment function, demand for executive level, ‘high impact’ investing talent has been on the rise, and that demand is expected to soar in coming years. But recruiters say these roles can be generally difficult to develop and ultimately recruit for clients, given their multi-disciplinary and evolving nature.

Recruiting top talent in our space has always been challenging and, even with the ongoing advances in technology and proliferation of third-party candidate databases, it will not get easier,” said Mr. Barrett in an interview with Hunt Scanlon Media several months ago. He said pay was a key factor; successful professionals are paid well throughout the sector, he opined, giving little incentive or reason for them to consider moves elsewhere.

“In an increasingly competitive marketplace, the challenge for recruiters in this space will be to demonstrate they have the relationships, market credibility, and industry knowledge to not just serve up candidates, but to deliver the right candidates,” he added.

Contributed by Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor, Hunt Scanlon Media

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