Frederickson Partners Appoints Chief Growth Officer in Chicago

Search firm plans to stay focused and improve on its core HR executive search and advisory offerings while strengthening and expanding its growing market position for unicorns/tech startups, high growth and transformational organizations.

January 14, 2020 – Frederickson Partners, an executive search firm that recruits high impact human resources and people leaders for innovative, high-growth and transformational companies, has named Brian Brinkley as chief growth officer. He will be based in the firm’s Chicago office.

“With the increasing utilization of artificial intelligence in strategic HR and the focus on building companies based on culture and values, the need for experienced, modern HR and people executives continues to climb,” said founder and CEO Valerie Frederickson. “Across every part of our industry segmentation from health tech to enterprise software, biotech and not-for-profits, we anticipate increased demand for experienced HR and people leaders who utilize culture to create engagement.” As such, the need has risen internally for a professional C-suite leader to help manage that demand and the inherent growth expected to come with it.

Frederickson’s 2020 trajectory includes growth in the firm’s U.S. and global HR search practices. In 2019, Frederickson’s international reach continued by completing HR searches for global tech unicorns and other high growth enterprises in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Latin America including the U.K., Seoul, Brazil and Mexico. Nationally, the company has added to its footprint by conducting HR searches in Chicago, Indiana, Washington, D.C., Florida, Seattle, New York, Texas, Ohio, Connecticut, Washington, Arizona and all major cities in California including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose.

“We are projecting to end 2019 with a 20 percent year-over-year growth,” Ms. Frederickson said. “Our projections into Q1 ’20 are stronger than they have ever been. We will continue to invest in strategic, thought leadership talent just as we do for our clients. We anticipate another record-breaking year for HR executive search across our portfolio.”

Fueling Growth

Mr. Brinkley will lead the go-to-market and business development functions for the search firm and focus on the increasing needs of Frederickson’s clients as they grow their businesses. With his extensive experience in HR transformation, total rewards, HR technology and HR professional services, Mr. Brinkley will partner and mentor clients on growth.


Changing the World, One HR Leader at a Time
Since civil rights activist Cezar Chavez came to speak to her second-grade class about the plight of the farm workers, Valerie Frederickson has worked to help others improve their lives and in the process make for a better world.

As the teenage daughter of parents devoted to desegregation and diversity, she spent her summers volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico. As a college student, she organized a series of career seminars for liberal arts majors, cajoling executives from leading companies to come and speak and share their wisdom with students who did not have degrees that translated directly into business. And as founder and chief executive officer of Frederickson Partners, she has forged a reputation for not only finding great talent but for her commitment to diversity and inclusion, both in the slates of candidates she presents and within her own Menlo Park, CA-based firm.


“Sometimes nothing is better than someone who’s been there, done that — as long as they bring a high-tech toolkit with them,” said Ms. Frederickson. “With Brian’s decades of experience across management and human capital management consulting, plus his operational roles, he’s in a unique position to engage with our clients where they are. We all welcome his leadership and life perspectives as we embark on the next phase of our growth. Working with high tech clients is always an exhilarating and wild ride and we welcome Brian helping us hold the reins.”

Mr. Brinkley is a nationally recognized thought leader in human capital management with a track record that includes years of management consulting at PwC and progressive to executive leadership roles at Aon Hewitt, West Monroe Partners, Premise Health and Evive.

“My deep expertise in management consulting and human capital consulting and operations will help organizations through a range of high-urgency business cycles mid/late stage startup, growth, merger integration, turnaround and digital transformation,” said Mr. Brinkley. “This new role is a ground breaker for an executive search firm; my team and I will provide strategic advisement to our clients through their growth cycles in identifying best practices for growth and scale. Due to the global shortage of digitally oriented, high growth HR and people leaders, more employers are promoting inexperienced up-and-comers into these roles. These first time heads of HR and people require coaching and support from people where it’s not their first rodeo.”

Related: Economic Climate Creating Challenges for Recruiters

Mr. Brinkley said that the firm’s venture- and private equity-funded clients like Nubank, Airtime and Carbon Health are all in high growth mode, as are enterprise clients like Softbank, Sprinklr, Comcast, Workday and Autodesk. “I’ve joined the firm in a senior leadership role to lead this growth both within our own firm and within this client portfolio,” he said. “On the client services side I will lead all advisory work for our portfolio including strategy, board management, talent management, total rewards and systems consulting. Internally, I will lead the strategic collaboration of client services, marketing and best practices while bringing my expertise in HR to fuel to next stage of growth.”


Frederickson Partners Recruits Global Head of Talent Acquisition for Nubank
Frederickson Partners has been enlisted to conduct a number of key global HR searches, including recently placing Os Fuentes as the new global head of talent acquisition, for Nubank, a digital bank and the largest financial technology company in Latin America. Mr. Fuentes previously served as global head of talent acquisition at Baraja, a rapidly growing start-up, with a revolutionary LiDAR for self-driving vehicles.


Ms. Frederickson said she sees a number of high growth opportunities. “One is to help our clients differentiate categories of HR talent and to determine the right fit based on their current strategic growth plan,” she said. “Another is to coach first time leaders through the playbook. Finally, to partner with our leading enterprise clients to up-level and backfill their HR bench.”

“Since we grow faster than we can describe it, I’d say our overarching plan to is provide strategic support in HR executive search and HR consulting to more employers across the U.S. and globally.” The firm now have offices in San Francisco, San Jose, Silicon Valley, Arizona, New York, Chicago, Ohio, Florida and Maine and continue to see the list lengthen.”

Founded in 1995, Frederickson Partners has completed over 2,500 HR executive searches and HR consulting engagements, maintaining relationships with more than 10,000 rising and established HR executives worldwide. Specializing in the placement of chief human resources officers/ chief people officers and their teams for high-growth employers, the firm also provides HR strategy, consulting and thought leadership.

Based in Menlo Park, CA, the firm is deeply rooted in the technology sector, with experience in biotech, clean energy, cloud and data storage, eCommerce, fintech, gaming, hardware, IoT, media, semiconductors and telecommunications.

Related: Recruiting Sector Jumps 13.9 Percent, Driven by Tightening Talent Markets

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

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