Executive Search Veteran Brian Blackshaw Dies

January 24, 2024 – Brian Blackshaw, founder and CEO of Blackshaw Partners, has died. Over its history, Blackshaw Partners had completed over 2,000 executive search assignments around the globe for blue-chip multinationals, high-performing start-ups, and private equity firms. Mr. Blackshaw founded the global executive search firm in 1976 after spending five years with the Singer Company in corporate recruiting at their international headquarters in New York. Blackshaw Partners relocated its headquarters from Atlanta, GA, to Frisco, TX, in 2021. 

With over 25 years of experience serving clients in a wide variety of industries, Mr. Blackshaw had personally conducted over 600 assignments ranging from vice president to C-suite executives for Fortune 1000, private equity firms, and non-profit organizations. These clients included Home Depot, Avis, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Orbitz, Galileo, RJR Nabisco, Equitable Real Estate, Diners Club, Warburg Pincus, Guggenheim, Schering Plough, Kimberly Clark, Lexmark, the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, Sotheby’s, AIG, Dun & Bradstreet, and Wyndham Worldwide.

Involvement with Non-Profits

Mr. Blackshaw was very active in the arts community in Atlanta and served as a member of the boards of directors for the Woodruff Arts Center of Atlanta and chairman of the Arts Center’s Advance Gifts Campaign. Mr. Blackshaw was also a board member of the Cerebral Palsy Foundation of Atlanta. He was an alumnus of the University of Missouri.

Blackshaw Associates’ team has over four decades of experience in placing C-suite and executive leaders across all verticals, including finance, hospitality, leisure, insurance, media and entertainment, real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, telecommunications and non-profit. Blackshaw Associates’  global network, has experience placing cross-cultural candidates in Japan-based and European companies doing business in North America.

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor; Lily Fauver, Senior Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media