Judith M. von Seldeneck

Founder and Chair

Judith M. von Seldeneck is the Founder and Chair of Diversified Search, headquartered in Philadelphia. A pioneer in the search industry, she has been identifying and placing senior-level executive talent around the country for more than four decades.

A born-and-bred North Carolinian, she began her career as an executive assistant to then-Senator Walter F. Mondale in Washington, D.C. Her road into executive search commenced in the early 1970s when she bought into a small Philadelphia firm founded to find temp jobs for women. Buying out her partners in 1974, over the next several decades von Seldeneck built Diversified Search into one of the top ten executive search firms in the nation.

During the course of her career, von Seldeneck has been recognized by the executive search industry as setting the standard for retained executive search and has been active on numerous public, private, and not-for-profit boards of directors. Some of these include the National Association of Corporate Directors, Philadelphia Chapter (Chair); Citizens Financial Group; Tasty Baking Company; CoreStates Financial Group; Meridian Bancorp; and AAA MidAtlantic. She currently serves on the Comcast and NBC Universal Joint Diversity Council and is Chairperson of the Women’s Advisory Council. She was also a founder of the Forum of Executive Women, the largest association of women business leaders in the Philadelphia region.

She has been the recipient of dozens of awards and honors recognizing her achievements both professionally and philanthropically. These include the Association of Executive Search Consultants’ Eleanor H. Raynolds Award for Excellence in Executive Search; being designated as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 50 Most Influential Executive Recruiters in the World; induction into the Philadelphia Business Hall of Fame; and receiving the William Penn Award, the highest honor bestowed by the business community of Greater Philadelphia. She is also a Global Board Member of AltoPartners.

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Political Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill