Let’s complete your team
About Us
Chances are you don't have to run a high-stakes search often. But it also means you haven’t invested the time to iterate and learn. Our training and recruiting experience allow us to ask probing questions and discover the opportunity in a leadership transition. Our guidance generates insights and helps candidates understand what your organization’s needs truly are.
Recruiting takes time and can be unpredictable, so you shouldn't have to go it alone. For the duration of our engagement, you get us, not a junior associate. You also get our marketplace expertise, our judgment, and our efforts working as an integral part your team. We work in partnership with you and your colleagues to solve for the leadership opportunity ahead.
We help you find the right solution - not just for your role - but also for your organizational culture and mission.
Why ‘Narwhal Talent Partners’?
We know you are looking for something special, maybe even one-of-a-kind. Enough hiring managers told us they were looking for a unicorn that we started to wonder: ‘Can we help our clients create the conditions for outcomes that are both true and aspirational?’
We’re not corporate, or all-purpose, or a clearinghouse - and neither is our name, nor our clients. Because the process of recruiting talent is extraordinarily personal, you need someone to build relationships and run a responsive search process designed to meet your highest expectations.
Our clients are not looking for someone to tell them how to run their business. Partners is in our name because our service is not only to provide candidates from which to choose: our clients are seeking partnership in the process.
Our Story
As former educators and administrators in independent schools, we know what success looks like for you.
Our founding partners each started out teaching students in the classroom. For 20 years each of us had made a commitment to build and grow programs that educate young people.
That was until a mutual friend -and school business officer- introduced us in 2018 because we “would enjoy meeting each other” - and we have been working together ever since. We share a work history in summer camps and independent schools. We bonded over the stories that former employees, hiring managers, and administrators naturally have about the unique ways in which these places operate - and a sense that we could make a difference working together.
We bring joy, purpose, and resonance with your mission to our recruiting work.
We get you.
We listen, seek to understand, and serve your priorities in all we do. We:
produce custom candidate research
proactively reach prospective candidates
cultivate candidate interest
generate marketplace intelligence
get buy-in from your team
manage relationships and risks
persevere, and complete your team
Our Partners
Meet Peter
Peter Hamilton is an educator, former dean, and fundraiser.
“When I was working in schools and approached by search firms, it all felt very transactional, as if they were trying to sell me something. They did not take the time to learn what was important to me, and didn’t use my time wisely. I could tell they didn’t know their client. Because our clients put relationships at the core of their mission, it seems natural that in our recruiting work we would do the same.” (LinkedIn)
Meet Christian
Christian Henry is a former CFO, fundraiser, non-profit administrator, and teacher.
“It’s my impulse to pull things apart, work together to discover solutions, fix things, and in general leave them better than I found them. That sense of accomplishment motivated me when starting a school, and it’s why seeing our clients well served is satisfying for me. Each organization we work with has unique and differentiated opportunities. They deserve distinctive solutions.” (LinkedIn)