Our clients are colleges and universities, foundations, and other not-for-profit organizations.

Auerbach Associates specializes in executive search for institutions that serve the public good and are essential to creating an educated citizenry. Our clients are colleges and universities, foundations, and other not-for-profit organizations — institutions that are increasingly turning to outside consultants for help in recruiting outstanding leaders. We work at the highest levels of an organization and in a broad range of areas.

Together, we have decades of varied experience. Our list of searches and clients is substantial, and our approach combines recruiting with the organizational consulting that logically precedes and follows any major addition to the professional staff of an institution. We attend to both sides of the recruiting equation in a consistent and careful fashion, and we are particularly attentive to issues of professional access for women and people of color.

We take great pride in bringing forward exceptional candidates who often are not actively seeking new positions. We play a highly consultative role with candidates and client institutions, acting as a bridge between candidates, search committee, and appointing authority. We take responsibility for shepherding the search process from the first to the final stage, ensuring that it reflects well upon the client institution, and we provide a more comprehensive range of services than an organization can provide for itself in the course of a thorough search process.

We always need to learn quickly what makes for excellence in a particular field, but we are always respectful of the appropriate role of a search committee in evaluating a candidate. In the course of a site visit, we listen carefully to understand the mission of the new leader and the goals of the organization. We learn how past successes and failures can contribute to our ability to identify candidates. Our experience and background preparation enable us to evaluate mastery, imagination, and authority in a career, and to bring important insight to a project before we ever begin a search. Continuing relationships with client institutions, and with candidates, involving numerous assignments, have also proved mutually beneficial and rewarding.