Presidents and Cabinet

SJG's presidential search practice has focused on smaller institutions seeking to draw a president from a wide variety of senior leadership positions within higher education. We work closely to cultivate a leadership pipeline that yields a broad, deep, and diverse pool of applicants for our clients to consider, having conducted more than five hundred searches in our nineteen-year history, entirely in higher education. SJG is a long-standing member of the ACE Executive Roundtable, exhibiting regularly at ACE annual conferences and presenting at the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education (NAPAHE) annual meeting. We also sponsor the annual President's Institute at CIC--the Council of Independent Colleges. As frequent presenters and panelists at such professional conferences and seminars serving professionals in higher education, SJG consultants are engaged in the national conversation helping to define and promote best practices in the field.

Our focus at SJG is in developing leadership pipelines and as such we have conducted hundreds of searches for vice presidents in academic affairs, enrollment, student affairs, finance, and advancement. This is the pipeline that we use for identifying those individuals ready for a move to a presidency. For example, when working on a search for a president of a small private college, we would initially focus our cultivation of vice presidents, provosts and other senior leaders from similarly sized private institutions in nearby regions, moving outward to target individuals in other regions who have familiarity with the mission, academic programs, and priorities that parallel the needs of our client. Our proprietary, confidential database contains contact information for over 48,000 seasoned professionals, many of whom are not "in the market" and would not normally respond to a general advertisement but maintain a file with us for selective review. We augment this proprietary database with specific research and identification efforts to generate a target group of individuals for whom this would be a strong fit and appropriate leadership opportunity, targeted toward a list of individuals most likely to have experience at institutions similar to the client institution, and in positions that have provided the individuals with the opportunity to gain the necessary skills.