True Search Assists Naked Wines with CFO Search
January 4, 2021 – Haddonfield, NJ-based executive recruitment firm True Search has assisted in the placement of Shawn Tabak as the new chief financial officer of wine subscription business Naked Wines in Napa, CA. He replaces James Crawford, who is moving to head the U.K. business as managing director. Rhoda Longhenry, Christina Trinh Nguyen, Sean Pacheco and Alan Cork led the search on behalf of True.
âIâm delighted that Shawn will be joining Naked and am excited about partnering with him to deliver the next stage in Nakedâs growth,â said Nick Devlin, group CEO at Naked Wines. âShawnâs deep understanding of driving growth through a focus on customer economics and cohorts makes him ideally suited to the role at Naked. Additionally, his understanding of the U.S. market will be highly valuable and recruiting this role in the USA, our largest market, is another key step in our transition from British start-up to a U.S.-led global pureplay.â
Mr. Tabak was previously vice president of finance at Upwork Inc., a work marketplace that connects businesses with independent talent. Before that, he was vice president of investor relations and treasury at Shutterfly and CFO at Clean Power Finance, a venture-backed company. Earlier in his career, Mr. Tabak spent 10 years at KPMG in the U.S. and Australia, across a range of audit and transaction services roles, during which time he achieved his CPA qualification.
âIâm delighted to join the team at Naked Wines, a company thatâs disrupting the wine industry for the benefit of consumers and independent winemakers,â said Mr. Tabak. âThis is an exciting time as the companyâs differentiated business delivers superior value to wine consumers in a large and growing online wine market, and I look forward to working with this strong team to create value for customers, employees and shareholders.â
Serving the Private and Public Sectors
Working in both the private and public sectors, True Search has offices throughout the U.S. as well as the EMEA and APAC regions. Since the late 1990s, the firmâs founders have refined their search process with a blend of data-centric insights, relationship-building, and experience to produce a methodology that consistently improves hiring decisions and accelerates growth. Clients include: Jet, Work Front and Summit Partners. True Search is a subsidiary of True Platform, a global portfolio of human capital services and products for high-growth tech and tech-enabled organizations.
Ms. Longhenry has over 18 years of executive search experience and leads True Searchâs financial officersâ practice. She works closely with leading venture capital and private equity firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Accel Partners, NEA and JMI. Clients include GitHub, Asana, Zenefits, PagerDuty, Datastax, Rent the Runway, Machine Zone, The Trade Desk, Cruise Automation, Grand Rounds, MasterClass and General Assembly.
Ms. Trinh Nguyen is a senior associate within the financial officersâ practice in New York. Before True, she recruited for subject matter experts, technical talent and executives at both public and private companies across various industries.
As a partner at True, Mr. Pacheco works within the financial officers practice bringing over 15 years of financial search experience to the team. He focuses on critical CFO, VP of finance and controller engagements for growth-stage companies across multiple sectors and asset classes (early stage, venture, PE and public).
Mr. Cork is a partner at True where he specializes in leading recruiting assignments serving consumer facing businesses such as restaurants, hospitality, food service and consumer packaged goods in CEO and C-suite roles. He is focused on finding the best current and next generation talent for growth businesses with demanding owners, private or public.
New Pressures on CFOs
Immediate concerns around cash flow, liquidity and the bottom line are taking precedence at many companies due to continued fallout from the pandemic. But there are high-value lessons emerging from the current health and economic crisis that chief financial officers should bear in mind, according to recruiters specializing in finding talent for finance functional roles.
Executive Search Review Special Issue: Financial Services Recruiting
Hunt Scanlon Media has just released our latest special issue of ESR. This time around we take an in-depth look at the challenges financial services firms are facing in their hunt for new talent.
We cover it all: How CFOs are confronting new layers of risk in the pandemic era; the rapid and dramatic change coming at the CFO; using people analytics to acquire top talent, predict performance & reduce turnover; and why banks are turning to search firms. We even provide our latest âFinancial Fifty Recruitersâ ranking of financial services search firms! In this special issue of ESR, Hunt Scanlon editors take an extraordinary inside look at recruiting during these unprecedented times. Click here and enjoy.
This COVID-19 crisis has thrust CFOs into the spotlight as never before, they report, while the pandemic itself has also created a business environment in which CFOs are uniquely positioned to drive business value during the recovery phase, which is expected to come in 2021 and 2022.
All too many companies today are desperate to get as much cash on their balance sheets as possible in order to ride out the storm of COVID-19, say recruiters. Bottom-line pressures are forcing many businesses to shift their forecasting strategies, explore new products and services â or even expand into alternative sales and delivery channels. The best CFOs are spearheading that effort.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor â Hunt Scanlon Media